‘We’re not doing this, Farlan,’ she said slowly. ‘I get that you’re still angry with me for what I did. And I’m sorry I hurt you. If it makes you feel any better, I hurt myself too.’
In front of her, the ATVs were slowing. She watched distractedly as they stopped and parked in a line. Breathing out unsteadily, she stopped the car behind them, her fingers curling around the door handle.
‘But we don’t need to discuss what happened in the library. It was meaningless for both of us, I’m sure.’ His eyes flickered but she ploughed on. ‘It was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking. But it won’t happen again.’
She was already halfway out of the car. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.’
She was wrong, Farlan thought as he followed her across the snow. That kiss hadn’t been meaningless for either of them. It had been too raw, too desperate, too spontaneous to be anything other than sheer compulsion.
Something she had confirmed in her next breath.
‘It was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking…’
His pulse dipped.
He was pretty sure that, like most people, Nia had chosen those particular words to distance herself from her actions, to make it sound as though there was some cosmic force in play over which she had no control.
Ironically, in claiming that, she’d made their kiss more, not less, meaningful.
Nia hadn’t been thinking because lust didn’t require thought.
Kissing her back hadn’t required any input from his brain either.
Lust was an inarticulate craving, a wordless hunger that overrode logic and self-preservation.
The difference was he could admit that—privately anyway.
His chest tightened. For him, too, it had been involuntary. He hadn’t wanted his body to respond to hers, and he was angry with her and himself.
She had lied to him seven years ago, deemed him unworthy, and he couldn’t understand how he was still so drawn to her.
After what had so nearly happened in the cottage, he’d been sure he would call a halt. That he hadn’t—or rather couldn’t—had been the reason he’d been so brusque with her afterwards.
But, like hers, his mind and body had been playing push-me-pull-me with the past.
It was inevitable—and entirely predictable. Of course he wanted to taste her again.
Only now he wanted more than just a taste…
The rest of the morning was spent crossing the vast estate, checking the herds of deer and cattle and inspecting gates and fences.
Nia was a good boss, he thought, watching her with Johnny and the other men. Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised him, but when he’d found out from Tom and Diane that she ‘oversaw’ the running of the estate, he’d been more than a little sceptical.
At nineteen, she’d been the smartest, most cultured person he’d ever met. And the sweetest. Picturing the shy, quiet girl of seven years ago, he’d found the idea of her running anything improbable, and had assumed that it was a vanity job for the daughter of the house.
But Nia clearly knew what she was doing. And it was clear that her staff liked and respected her. Probably because she listened and valued their opinions.
‘How big is the estate?’ he asked.
She turned. It would be natural to think that her cheeks were flushed from the cool air, but the slight tension around her jawline told a different story.
‘It’s just under twenty-eight thousand acres.’
He stared at her. Her hair had come loose and was framing her face, and he wondered why he’d thought she had lost her sparkle. There was a luminosity to her skin that rivalled the glittering snow, and the delicate curve of her jaw and high cheekbones made the faces of those around her look smudged and unfinished.
‘And you manage it all?’ Gazing across the white hills with their craggy outcrops, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
‘With help,’ she said quickly. ‘I couldn’t possibly do it on my own. I don’t have the expertise or the experience.’