“I do research folklore,” she allowed, meeting those mesmerizing crystal eyes with her own. “But I prefer to incorporate real folklore into accounts of fictional lives. How the folklore grew in the culture, who passed it on, who kept it. People seem to enjoy it more that way than when I just put everything in an anthology. If Lee didn’t send you one of my books, I can get one for you if it would help. I have one on the Appalachians,Simple Gifts,and another on the Mississippi called—”
He waved her off even before she finished. “I have a ranch to run, Miss Marlow. That leaves me precious little time for anything else.”
Amanda stepped forward again, afraid of losing her link to the past, the spark that would ignite an entire book. Hattie was a gift, and Amanda wasn’t the kind of author to simply give a gift back.
“Hattie was so eloquent,” she protested, her hand instinctively out to him, to stop him, to convince him, to make him understand the fire that had been missing for so long. “She deserves to be heard. If you don’t read me, read her. Read what your great-grandmother said about your home, because I promise you’ll see this place in a whole new light.”
“I don’t need a new light,” he snapped, turning on her, standing so close Amanda could see the stubble of new beard on his chin. She could feel the brush of his breath on her cheek and the curious, curling heat of his gaze. “I see this place every day, and there isn’t a damn thing that’s romantic about it.”
Amanda faced him, unflinching, mesmerized by the glint of those eyes, unnerved by the harsh cant of his voice, the steely control of some emotion that churned just below the surface.
“Take the damn things,” he snarled, bearing down on her. “Take whatever the hell you want. Just get out of my hair.”
Amanda backed up, his ferocity frightening her. She bumped up against the dining chair and reached back to balance herself. He was scaring her. He was compelling her. His nearness sizzled along her nerve endings like imminent lightning. His eyes smoldered. His hands clenched at his sides, and Amanda could see the pulse jumping in his throat.
How could one man take the strength from her knees? How could he make her ache just by glaring at her? By letting his gaze slip from her face down to where the top button of her blouse lay open. Down to the corduroy slacks she’d worn and the boots that would survive snow and pasture. She thought she saw derision in his gaze, frustration. She thought she saw the sudden smolder of desire, and it frightened her even more.
By the time his gaze returned to hers, there was only cold ferocity left. “People like you can’t leave well enough alone,” he accused her on a growl.
Amanda didn’t know what he meant. She wasn’t sure he did. She straightened, fought for composure. For sanity when her heart was thudding and her palms were damp with anticipation. “You don’t understand.”
His laughter was as harsh as his expression. “Oh, I understand all right.” He lifted a hand. It was all Amanda could do to keep from flinching. But he didn’t mean to strike her. He reached out to test her skin with his finger. Amanda caught her breath. She couldn’t quite pull a thought together past the sudden churn of electricity just the brush of a callused finger could ignite. She couldn’t understand the sudden softening in those haunted blue eyes.
“I understand just fine,” he murmured. His hand slid past her cheek to her hair, and his fingers curled along her throat, holding her, freezing her with the scorching intensity of his touch.
His eyes met hers, enigmatic, hypnotic eyes, eyes that glinted with ferocity and yet melted with a sudden, inexplicable yearning. Amanda was certain he meant to kiss her. She trembled with it, battered by the onslaught to her senses, suddenly hungry and afraid. She met his gaze with more courage than she had, with more composure than that hot, hard blue left her. Her chest burned for air. Her legs threatened to buckle. For a brief breath of a moment, they stood poised on the brink of something neither understood, and it shook Amanda to her very core.
Just as suddenly, Jake let go. “Take the papers,” he said, straightening. “Talk to the hands. Buy a horse if you want. Just stay clear of me.”
And with no more than that, he turned and walked back out of the house. It took Amanda another solid five minutes before she could manage a coordinated movement.
Dear Lord, what had just happened? She’d been frozen like a frog in the glare of a flashlight, thought and action thrown into sudden immobility by just the touch of one man. That had never happened before. She’d been engaged, so close to the altar that she could hear the organ music, and she’d never felt so shattered by the loss of her fiancé’s touch as she felt now. She’d never had to reach around and support herself on a chair just to keep from puddling right down on the floor where she stood.
Jake was sexy, there was no doubt about that. Sexy in a way she’d never experienced before, earthy and raw and sensual. But more than that had brought her down. The ferocity in his eyes hadn’t been simple desire. It had been conflict and longing.
What was it she’d seen in his eyes? What history? What loss? Amanda had come to the Diamond K in the hopes she could cull stories and gather jokes and songs and riddles from the hands. But it was the boss who haunted her. She wanted to understand this man whose sister adored him, who commanded respect and yet treated her with a kind of harsh anger that didn’t make sense.
What had hurt him?Whohad hurt him? Because Amanda was sure that that was what had been lying beneath his curious words and actions. A hurt so deep that it scarred him. A hurt that had been buried more deeply than the papers in that attic.
For a long few minutes she stood where she was, her fingers lingering over the place Jake Kendall had touched. She could still feel his hand on her, the rasp of work-hardened fingers, the almost painful gentleness of the contact. The stunning impact of his ambivalence. Contrasts and questions. Chemistry and confusion.
He was the most potent, troubling, fascinating man she’d ever met. He’d just told her to stay away from him. Amanda looked out the front window at the far end of the room to where Jake Kendall was swinging up onto a paint horse in the corral, and all she could think of was what she could do to get around his edict.
Because she wouldn’t stay away from him. It was a stupid decision for her to make. Unproductive, unwise, certainly unpopular. The last thing she needed right now was the enigma of Jake Kendall. The last thing she wanted was conflict. She’d had enough of that in the last three years. She’d had fame and fortune and the double-edged sword of adulation. She’d come to Wyoming to recover her peace, to rediscover the joys of being a hermit. And her second day here, she was trying her best to figure out a way to give it away again.
Stupid.
She smiled anyway, a tremulous, nervous smile that was equal parts exhilaration and terror. Amanda might be a folklore writer, but what she really liked was mysteries. And Jake Kendall was the most intriguing mystery she’d ever come across. A mystery that still crackled across her fingertip like an electrical storm. He’d unwittingly challenged her with his silence, and now she had no choice but to answer. It was probably the most dangerous thing she’d ever done in her life, but she was going to get to the bottom of Jake Kendall, whether he liked it or not.
