"You know, Denny, not everyone who doesn"t travel with us is an outsider."
Denise tossed her head, sending her hair flying over her shoulder. She drained the can in a last, long gulp, then crushed it. "Yes, they are. They"re outside and we"re in."
"Did you ever stop to consider that it might be the other way around?"
She stiffened at the sound of Will"s voice behind her. She hadn"t heard him approaching. Denise glared at her father. He might have at least warned her they weren"t alone. Handing the misshapen can back to Tate, she turned around to look at Will.
Tate knew when to withdraw from the line of fire. It seemed a good idea to pull up stakes now, so he did.
Like a bantam-weight fighter, Denise balanced herself on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, her face pugnaciously turned up to his.
"Meaning?"
She looked ready for a fight, he thought, and all he"d done was make a comment. "That you"re the one on the outside?"
That was exactly the way she"d felt when she thought herself in love with Audra"s father. At the time, being an outsider had stung and stung badly. Eventually she"d gotten over it and sh.o.r.ed up her beaches.
But there was no reason to share that with this man.
Denise lifted her chin. "No, I"m the one who"s free." Deliberately moving him out of her way, she strode toward the fun house. Even from here, she could see that the sign hanging over the top of the doorway was crooked. As she walked, she shoved her gloves back on her hands.
"Now if you"ve had enough slumming," she said dismissively, "you can go anytime."
It took a second for the verbal thrust to penetrate. He"d worked as hard here as any day he"d put in on the ranch. She had no right to be snide with him, especially since he was doing her a favor.
"Is that what you think I"m doing?" Annoyed, he caught up to her in three strides and turned her around to face him. "Slumming?"
Shrugging his hand off her arm, her eyes dared him to tell her differently.
"Aren"t you?" She turned her back on him again, walking quicker this time. "Aren"t you here just to get a kick out of this? See what it means to really work for a living instead of sitting back and not even breaking a sweat over what you do?"
It amazed him to feel anger forming in response to her accusation. He was the calm one in the family, the one who never lost his temper. But for some unknown reason, this slip of a woman with the rattlesnake tongue set him off.
"That"s so wrong, I don"t even know where to start untangling it."
She spared him one cold look over her shoulder before she went to commandeer a ladder. If he"d come expecting her to be grateful that a townie had spared a few hours to share some of their sweat, he was going to go away disappointed.
"Then don"t bother."
Will glanced toward the rear lot where his Jeep was. For two cents he"d just walk away and...
h.e.l.l, this would bother him all night Longer. He wasn"t going anywhere until he put this foul-tempered woman in her place.
He caught Denise by the shoulder just as she began to drag the ladder back toward the "building" that had taken three of her crew the entire time to reconstruct.
"Just what the h.e.l.l set you off?" Will demanded. "The fact that you"re not right?"
This time, when she jerked her arm, he held fast. She struggled for a moment, then stopped. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. "What do you mean?"
Will realized that he was holding on a little too hard and dropped his hand. "You probably thought you had me pegged as some well-off sn.o.b-"
A smug smile curved her mouth. "Well?"
He felt a distinct desire to wipe that smile off her face, using any means possible.
"It depends on your definition of well-off, and I"ve never been accused of being a sn.o.b in my life." He caught the frayed ends of his temper before they unraveled completely and lowered his voice. "And I think that after about three hours of this, even you"d admit that I"ve held my own."
Maybe. To someone else. But not to him. "I don"t have to admit anything," Denise said.
Why was he even bothering? If Will thought about it for any length of time, he didn"t even know what he was doing here. If he was so all-fired bent on physical labor, he could have been putting the time in on his parents" ranch, not here for some ungrateful h.e.l.lion.
Disgusted with her and himself, Will shook his head. "No, you don"t. People like you never do."
He couldn"t have annoyed her more if he"d deliberately tried.
"People like me," she echoed. Hands on hips, Denise glared at him. "Just what do you mean, people like me?"
"Prejudiced people."
"Prejudiced?" She stared at Will as if he"d lost his mind. How could he possibly accuse her of that? The crew that worked for her was as diverse a mixture of people as could be hoped for. One glance, however cursory, was all that was necessary to make him aware of that fact. "Boy, are you ever off. I don"t have a prejudice bone in my body."
He managed to get a good portion of his temper under control, though not all of it. "Take another inventory. Somewhere amid that lovely bone structure of yours is a whole slew of prejudice bones."
She opened her mouth to retort, but he never gave her the chance. Years of surviving with Morgan had sharpened his reflexes and taught him to be quick.
"What? You think that you can only be prejudiced against color or religion? Well, think again." He could feel his temper reheating, fanned by his own words. "Lady, you think you have me all figured out and stuck into some round little hole." One by one, he pointed out her flaws. "You"re prejudiced against anyone who doesn"t belong to your tight little group, you"re prejudiced against anyone who you think has more money than they can keep in a sock and you"re especially prejudiced against men."
There were a whole host of names that begged to be flung at him and she could barely contain them. But Audra was somewhere within earshot, and she wasn"t about to let her daughter hear her swear at this pompous, muscle-bound jerk.
Instead Denise seasoned her response with smug sarcasm. "All this in three hours?"
He satisfied himself, for the moment, with an image of his hands around her slender throat. "I"m a fast study."
She wasn"t rattling him-and that annoyed her beyond words. Her eyes became small, accusing slits. "Well, you"re wrong on all counts."
How could he want to wring her neck one second, and desire her company the next? He wasn"t on medication and as far as he knew, hadn"t ingested anything to make him crazy. Yet there were these two very vital juxtaposed thoughts and feelings crashing into one another within him.
"Prove it."
Suspicion leaped up to take possession of Denise. "How?"
She was looking at him as if she expected him to turn into some mythical monster, Will thought. "Have dinner with me tonight."
Right, waltz into his lair, just like that Been there, done that "The h.e.l.l I will." She bit off the words, turning her back on him and grabbing hold of the ladder.
When he tried to help her with it, she blocked him with her body. The woman was impossible.
So why did he find her so d.a.m.n compelling?
"All right, dinner with my family, then."
"Family?"
The word stopped her in her tracks. She looked at Will curiously. David had made excuses when she"d asked to meet his family. If she"d been seeing clearly instead of through rose-colored gla.s.ses, she would have realized that he was ashamed of her. All the signs had been there.
Now this man she cared nothing about wanted to drag her off to meet his people.
"My parents," he explained. "Maybe one or two of my brothers if we can scrounge them up." A smile played on his lips. "Bring Audra and your father along if you don"t trust yourself."
Trust herself? What, did he think she was going to jump his bones? The smug b.a.s.t.a.r.d thought a lot of himself, didn"t he?
"What are you talking about?"
The woman was almost shooting lightning bolts at him with her eyes. He began to enjoy himself. "Denny, I"ve learned that when there"s this much feeling about something, the bottom line is pa.s.sion."
Releasing the ladder, she turned to face him, raising herself up on her toes. "You"re out of your mind."
Will merely smiled. "Am I?"
He was standing much too near for comfort. And his mouth was a great deal closer than she would have liked. She struggled, not with him but herself, because suddenly she was tempted. Tempted to see if those lips of his were as unsettling as his rhetoric was.
Maybe he was right. Maybe the bottom line was pa.s.sion. But it wasn"t what he thought. The pa.s.sion was tied in with the very pa.s.sionate desire to keep the lines between them straight, the boundaries all in place, and her small world unthreatened by anything that could throw it on its ear-the way it had once been when she fell for Audra"s father.
For the first time in his life, Will struggled with the desire to sweep a woman into his arms and kiss her. It left him a little shaken. If he didn"t know better, he would have said Hank was channeling through him. Hank was the ladies" man, not him.
He cleared his throat. "So what do you say?"
Staring into his eyes, she"d lost the thread of the question. "To what?"
"Dinner for openers."
Like a woman watching someone else"s dream, Denise felt his smile curl its way into her system. Heard herself answer without remembering having formed the words. "I say okay to dinner and it"s not an opener."
She was wrong, it was definitely an opener. "There you go again, being prejudiced."
Denise reconnoitered. "No, I"m being sensible. And there are lines-"
He could have sworn he saw a flicker of fear in her eyes just then. But that was impossible. What could she possibly have to fear from him? "Denny-"
Her back went up. "Don"t call me that. You have no right to call me that."
He could only shake his head in wonder. "I have to earn the right to call you by your nickname?" He"d heard her father call her that. "You come with a lot of rules, lady."
She"d had enough of this. There was still a great deal of work to do. It wasn"t going to get done by her wasting time, talking to him. Turning, she went up the rungs quickly.
"Then don"t bother playing."
Annoyance bred a quick retort. But it dried up on his tongue as, looking up, Will found himself staring at a very shapely posterior.
All right, maybe he"d stay in for another hand, he relented, although heaven only knew why. He wasn"t the type to be reined in by flashing eyes and skin the color of freshly warmed bread, done to perfection. He didn"t get swayed by physical attributes, never had. He"d always been far too sensible for that.
But there was something there, in those eyes of hers, that made him hang around for just one more exchange, one more rapidly fired volley. Something. He didn"t explore it any further than that.
"You really want that?" he challenged, his voice suddenly low. "You really want me to stop playing" and go?"
His question made her realize that she was torn. And because she was, self-preservation took over and she lashed out. Hands curling around the rung, she swung her head around to look down at him, an emphatic "yes" hovering on her tongue. The ladder wobbled, and she overcompensated by shifting to the other side.
The ladder pitched backward. Denise swallowed a scream as she felt herself falling. The next moment, strong, hard arms were closing around her as the ladder clattered to the ground. Without thinking, she threw her arms around his neck, her body firmly pressed against his chest. Warmth penetrated, blanketing her fear.
Her heart hammered in her throat, making it almost impossible for her to catch her breath. When she finally did, she exhaled in an exaggerated huff to hide how shaken she really was.
Despite the thrust of the sudden drop, she hardly felt as if she weighed anything at all. Will smiled at her. "I guess it"s a good thing for you that I didn"t leave when you wanted me to."
Aware that her arms were still around his neck, she pulled them back and splayed her hands against his chest, pushing him away. It felt as if she were pressing against a rock.
Her eyes flashed a warning in self-defense. "If I hadn"t turned around to answer you, I wouldn"t have fallen off."
He entertained the idea of dropping her before deciding against it One of them had to remain civilized. "Anyone ever tell you that you have the disposition of an angry hornet?"
Despite the flare of anger, Denise could feel her mouth curving at the absurdity of the situation. "Not anyone who"s alive to tell about it."
Her hint of a smile coaxed a larger one from him. His temper vanished. "That sounds strangely like a threat."
Denise didn"t want him holding her. It was far too easy to let herself like it. The struggling smile faded, replaced by a scowl. "Are you going to hold on to me like this all day?"
The woman"s mood swung back and forth faster than a weather vane in a storm, Will thought. "No, eventually you"d get to be too heavy." Before she could say anything else, he set her down, then dusted off his hands. "So how about it, are you game?"
The fall had temporarily knocked everything out of her head. Everything, except that a woman could easily lose herself in a pair of arms like that-provided she hadn"t already been kicked in the teeth by life.
"For what?" she asked suspiciously.
"Dinner," Will prodded patiently.
One shoulder rose, then fell carelessly as she looked off toward where the Ferris wheel was being set up. "I can"t speak for my father-"
"Since when?" Will hooted.
The jeer brought her up sharply. Her fighting spirit returned. "What do you mean?"
She couldn"t even manage to pull off that innocent act. "I wasn"t just working these last few hours, I"ve been watching you. You order everyone around, your father included."
Watching? He"d been watching her? Why? Fl.u.s.tered, she tossed her head defensively. "I don"t order, I...lead."
"Uh-huh." The grin on his face told her he wasn"t buying into her denial. "So lead them to the table."
She neatly changed routes. "You"re awfully free with your parents" hospitality."
Oh, no, she wasn"t going to wiggle out of it that easily. "So are they," he a.s.sured her. Will looked over toward the slide he and a burly crew member by the name of Cecil had put together. Cecil had tested it out three times before p.r.o.nouncing it safe. Will figured if it could support a man who looked as if he outweighed the average family, it would support small children. Eager to test it out, Audra was flying down the silvery incline, a commando yell emitting from her lips.