AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His smile faded for a moment, but then came back with a wry twist. He turned and started to get out of the truck. I watched, emotions whirling in my head, my chest, my stomach, as he crossed in front of the windshield. I didn’t know why a stupid little conversation about how I liked my steak could rile me up that way. Cal’s assumption—his completely justified and true assumption—that I had never had steak because my family couldn’t afford it had touched a nerve, or something, though.
And what the fuck was he doing now? Just leaving me in his fucking truck?
He came around toward my door. I looked at him with a scowl on my face. Was he going to taunt me, or something?
He opened the door for me. When I understood that he was just behaving like a ‘gentleman’ from some old movie, heat flooded my face. I looked at him with wide eyes, and he returned the stare with a puzzled little smile, as if he very much wanted to understand me, but hadn’t had a lot of success yet.
“Isn’t beef expensive everywhere?” I demanded, not moving to unfasten my seatbelt or to do anything else that suggested I intended to get out of the truck and go into Cal’s pretty little house and eat his probably delicious potato salad and his perfectly grilled steak.
He tilted his head to the side, and the slight confusion in his eyes started to look like disbelief.
“Well, yeah,” he said, “except where you can get it direct from the rancher, the way we do here.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess I’m just a city girl who doesn’t know shit like that.”
I had no idea, really, what had gotten into me. And it actually felt like something had gotten into me. On one level, sure, I understood that it probably had a lot to do with the stress and the disorientation involved in my forced resettlement in Grasskiln—and, right at the moment, my forced ‘date’ with Cal.
Gorgeous, easygoing, apparently kind and gentle Cal.
But I could also feel that I had overreacted in a major way. I couldn’t stop it, it seemed like, but I could definitely recognize it, and, worse, I realized that a similar feeling of being out of control had led to me going into the department store and swiping the earrings.
What had he said, just a few minutes ago in the truck? A ‘handful’ is a girl who’s got too much going on for her own good?
To my dismay, I suddenly felt like a handful. Of course, rather than helping me calm down, the realization made me furious. Also, I could tell that Cal wouldn’t do anything about it really—especially not what I had already learned Jake would do. Maybe it would make me feel better to show this clearly weak man that I could think for myself, and though I might not know about steak and ranchers and whatever, I had gotten by in the city for almost a year on my own, and I didn’t need any of this shit.
As I looked up into his blue eyes—he still loomed over me despite the height of his truck—and watched them narrow, I suddenly understood how badly I had judged Cal’s character. He might have a relaxed demeanor, but what I saw in his face then told me that it came from an absolutely secure command of his emotions. A thrill of terror went through my body, confusingly mingled with a surge of wayward, absolutely unwelcome need between my legs.
“Get out of the car, Grace,” he said. His voice sounded perfectly even. Dangerously calm.
“No,” I told him flatly. “You can… you can take me back to…”
I swallowed hard. Going back to Jake and Shelly’s didn’t represent an attractive option.
Cal looked at me, his face hard, for a moment, before he spoke, as if he felt the need to quiet his anger before proceeding.
“You don’t want that,” he said.
“I…”
No, I definitely didn’t want that. What the fuck did I want?
“What… what are you going to do?” I demanded, hearing my voice alternate between fear and anger just in those few words.
“I’m going to discipline you, Grace,” he said calmly. “You need to learn some boundaries, and I don’t mind teaching them to you.”
I felt my eyes go as round as saucers. I hadn’t expected him just to say it like that.
“Get out of the car,” he repeated, in a much more matter-of-fact way than the last time he had said it. The smoldering wrath I had seen, for a moment, in his gorgeous blue eyes, had gone away, as if he had recovered full mastery of his emotions.
I knew it was stupid even as I did it, but I couldn’t help myself. The urge to test him just got too strong, and the words came out before I could even think about them.
“Or what?” I asked. “You’ll get me out yourself?”
“If I have to,” Cal replied, and reached into the cab, his huge hands headed straight for the buckle of the seatbelt.
CHAPTER 19
