“Oh,” she said when he inched back.
Need moved through him at her reaction. He loved that little surprised look, not to mention the heat in her eyes. Christ, as much as he’d love to spend the next few hours losing himself in her, he had chores to do.
He cleared his throat. “Next up is tending to the horses and figuring out which one you want to take out tomorrow.”
Before long, they were knee-deep in their chores. They talked quietly about nothing and everything, and while Coop told her all there was to know about the ranch, there was one very private subject he wasn’t quite ready to broach—the real reason he was in Alberta. His mother. He’d bought this place for her, and built her a cozy cottage because she’d grown up on a ranch—Coop had lived on one with his folks until middle school, until his father took a job at a bank and they moved across country. Being in familiar surroundings helped with the confusion of her Alzheimer’s, but opening up about it to anyone and knowing the inevitable outcome was just too painful to talk about.
His thoughts returned to Julia. He’d watched her throughout the day and couldn’t believe how much pleasure she took in feeding, watering, and caring for the horses. It was a damn shame she never had her own. She was a giving person, and he liked that she wasn’t afraid of hard work and had readily helped him clean the stalls when he said she could sit that chore out. A few times, he caught her humming to herself. Perhaps, like him, ranch work took her away from her worries and from real life for a few hours.
By the time they finished their chores, breaking only for a late lunch, night was approaching, and they found themselves hot, tired, and hungry. As Coop watched Julia put the mare back in her stall, his hunger turned carnal.
“I like this one,” Julia called out after she secured the door behind her.
“And I like this one,” Coop said, sneaking up behind her so he could plant a kiss on her neck. But when she spun around, she tripped on a shovel, landing on the hard floor with a thud.
“Jesus, Julia, I’m sorry,” he hurried out. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Looking thoroughly embarrassed, she made a move to get up, but winced when she put weight on her ankle.
Coop scooped her up and set her on a chair. Then he dropped to his knees and took her ankle in his hand.
She tried to squirm away. “It’s okay, really.”
He felt along her bone. Once he was certain she didn’t have a fracture, he said, “Nothing feels broken.”
“Thank God, otherwise you might have to put me down,” she joked.
“You’re not a horse,” he said, grinning. “I think you’re going to be okay, but if you want to go into town for an X-ray—”
“No, I’ll trust the cowboy to know when a bone is broken or not.”
“I think it’s just bruised.”
“Yeah, that and my ego,” she said under her breath.
When he spotted the humiliated look on her face, Coop put his thumb under her chin, an unfamiliar fullness in his chest. “Hey, no need to be embarrassed around me. Besides, this was my fault. I feel terrible that something I did caused you pain.” He helped her to her feet, and as he held her against him, she seemed a little breathless, a little shaky.
When their gazes met, his heart hammered, and his entire body reacted as if he’d just been sucker punched. Even with her hair mussed and full of hay, she was breathtaking. Absolutely fucking gorgeous.
He picked hay from her hair. “How about a shower?”
She crinkled her nose. “Good idea.” She glanced past his shoulders. “I guess I’d better make my way back to my room.”
“No,” Coop said, caging her against him. “I don’t think you should.”
A bit flustered, she said, “I told you my ankle is fine.”
“And I told you I don’t think you should go to your room.”
She lifted one brow. “No? Then how am I supposed to shower?” She looked around. “Unless you have some shower here that I’m not aware—”
“In my room. With me.”
Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink. For a brief second, he thought he spotted a moment of hesitation, but then she quickly blinked it away, her bravado back in place.
“I’d like that.”
He scooped her up and less than five minutes later, he was carrying her into his room on the top floor at the back end of the old farmhouse.
He set her down. “So this is how Chase Cooper lives.”
“Sometimes,” he said, and circled his hand around her waist. Home was in Nova Scotia, where he had a successful sports medicine practice. But he didn’t want to talk about that right now, because that conversation would lead to his mother and the reason he came here often. “Can you walk?”
She rotated her ankle. “It’s already feeling better.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
With his fingers on the small of her back, he led her to the bathroom. Desperate to get her naked again, he pulled the shower nozzle, adjusted the temperature to hot, and then turned his attention to her.
Not wanting to waste a moment, his hand went to her T-shirt. He gripped the hem and peeled it from her body. When he exposed her lace bra, air hissed from him, and his heart pounded harder.
“Jesus, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you agreed to join me.”
She dipped her head to take in the way his hard-on was pressing against his jeans, and in a sexy, teasing voice laced with promise, she responded with, “You don’t have to tell me.”
Stepping into him, she pushed against his erection, letting him know in no uncertain terms what she wanted. This time there was no hesitation in her tone, no doubt in her eyes, and he knew with every fiber of his being that here on the ranch, here with him, she was setting another facet of her personality free.
Beneath the reserved package she presented to the world, she was fun, flirtatious, sexy as hell, and damned if he didn’t want her to understand that, to embrace that side of herself.
Her hand went to her bra, and she unhooked it from the back. It fell to the floor and exposed her full, gorgeous breasts. Her pale buds hardened beneath his lusty gaze, and he was pretty damn certain he was the luckiest fucking guy on earth.
He stepped back and made quick work of his clothes. He kicked the pile away from his feet, entered the shower stall, and pulled her in with him.
She gasped and laughed as water soaked her clothes. “I’m still dressed.”
“I can rectify that.” He unzipped her shorts and peeled them down her long legs, and then he gripped her panties to drag them away.
Her breathing changed, became a little faster, and once she was naked, Coop pulled her into the warm stream and held her tight, enjoying the softness of her skin against his. As the hot water fell over them, Julia made a sexy little noise that prompted him into action.
He grabbed the soap and lathered her body, running it over her curves, around her breasts, and between her legs, taking extra care with her sore ankle. Quivering beneath his touch, she moaned with pleasure, and Coop grinned, loving how responsive she was to his touch. Once she was clean, she took the soap and turned it on him. She ran the bar over his body, paying extra attention to his cock. She ran her hands along the length, and the sweet torture made him throb.
“I was thinking,” she murmured, and wet her lips.
“About what?” he managed to get out as pleasure forked through him.
She stepped closer, her hands never leaving his cock as she rubbed her hard nipples against his chest. “This time, I want to make you scream for me.”
A groan caught in his throat. Truthfully, he loved that she cared about his pleasure, and that she wasn’t simply out to take what she could from the cowboy, the way things normally went down on the ranch. But Julia wasn’t like those other women, and Coop wasn’t a man to take without giving first.