Billi Jean by Running Scared Page B

and he couldn’t stop his hand from giving her cute ass a swat.
    “Russell!” She jumped and glared at him. “You’re terrible.”
    “Yeah, your ass is too damn hot in those cords, honey.”
    “Huh.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a sniff and got out, jumping down before he could get his brain working enough to help her. Just as well. He was probably going to hobble for life. “I get up early—”
    “I’ll be here. Now, get in the house.”
    Frowning, she shut his door a bit too firmly and flung her hair back over her shoulder. Didn’t like orders, did she? He watched her bounce into her house. After a quick peek back at him, she disappeared through the door and closed it.
    What was he thinking? He could have been in that house. With her. Tonight. In her bed. Resting his head back on the seat, he stretched his legs, adjusting himself so his erection wasn’t as strangled. Soon. Soon he’d be in there, and not for some quick tumble or two. Susan Fielding was someone he wanted around. He’d seen it the first day they’d met. Now? After days of chasing her, then actually talking with her, he wanted a great deal more. His mind struggled with that, but it was catching up to his body. At this rate he’d not even get a hard-on for another woman, because thinking of tasting someone other than Susan was enough to make his cock shrink. He wanted her, warm and soft in his arms. He used to have dreams of a life after service. What man didn’t? It was hard as hell to actually think of reaching for them. But he wanted to. With her.
    The question was, did she? Or was she after sex like all the other women?
    He was close to the point of it not mattering. He’d take the sex, work it so that he was in her life, create routines—he’d park himself here and not leave. He could feed his horses as easily from here as from up at the ranch.
    And if she tried to kick him out? At this point, he doubted she’d kick him out. But she might try running. She looked the type to make herself so busy she didn’t have to face things. Or pack up that perfect home and leave as quickly as she’d arrived.
    Russell was a good judge of people. She was scared. She was alone. She’d lost her dad, but had no pictures of him or anyone else up in that house of hers. A house that looked cosy, but wasn’t filled with anything personal. Nothing that seemed to reflect her. Not the neutral colours, not the bright airy kitchen. Not that he knew her well enough to judge what she would like, but still. Something in his gut said that that house was that. A house. Not a home.
    The woman was starting over.
    People who started over had several reasons. One could be because they didn’t like their life and picked up and left it, not willing to stick it out and face the problems.
    He should know.
    His mom had done it. Moved here when he was barely old enough to understand why she was frightened, scared and wary of any and all men. But he’d known she was running. Even as a young child, he’d known his mom was afraid. She had come clean ten years from the night she’d taken him across the country and started all over again in the mountains of Montana. His mom had run to protect him from an abusive SOB. Her first husband, a man Russell had hunted down his first year in the Navy and beaten senseless, had abused his mother for years. He’d hit Russell once, and that had been all it had taken for his mom to leave. She’d packed her bags in the middle of the night and driven across the entire country to protect him.
    Was Susan running to protect herself? And if so, from what? An abusive ex-boyfriend? The thought made him mad. Was that how she’d got the scar on her face? The scared look in her eyes the first day he’d met her? The wariness he still saw in her eyes?
    He hoped dinner and their hot kisses proved she was softening to him.
    His mom had taken years to trust another man. And she’d chosen right. His stepdad had been a keeper. A good