Single Mom's Protector - Complete Series

by Nella Tyler

  But it was impossible. Cade had been so much better than Titan—and better, in fact, than the couple of guys I’d been with before Titan—that there was almost no basis for comparison. He’d been so good that in the weeks since we’d slept together, I’d had to find ways to get some time alone—not an easy thing with an infant.

  I forced Cade out of my mind as best as I could when I spotted my friends at the meeting place we’d chosen. I was determined to have a good time with them, not obsess over the fact that Cade seemed to have decided he’d gotten what he wanted from me and didn’t want anymore.

  If Cade wasn’t interested in me, then I told myself I would find someone else. I would get my revenge by finding someone who was interested in me as more than a one-night stand, and I’d be happy long before he found someone to settle down with.

  I called out to my friends and thought only about the fun we were going to have while I could be away from the house, instead of thinking anything at all about how much more fun it would be with Cade. I hugged my girls and we set off, and I finally succeeded in no longer thinking about the farmhand at all.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Cade

  When I’d told Autumn that I had errands to run, I’d been lying; and when I saw the way her face fell just for an instant, before she recovered and the way that she tried to play off her hurt feelings from my rejection, I’d felt terrible, but I knew I had to stick with my story.

  I went straight home from the Nelson farm and took a shower to clean off the dirt, sweat, and fertilizer, and sat down in my living room, at a loss. I had the rest of the afternoon off, and I didn’t have to go by the farm the next day to work. By all rights, I should have taken Autumn up on her offer. After all: it was a harmless group outing, wasn’t it?

  But I knew that Bob Nelson almost certainly wouldn’t see it that way. I’d promised him when he hired me that I wouldn’t fall in love with his daughter and that I wouldn’t let her distract me from my work.

  In one sense, I’d honored that promise: I hadn’t gotten distracted from my work. But I had started to get feelings for her before we’d ever even slept together and having sex with Autumn had only made it worse.

  I’d turned down her invitations to hang out a few times, and every time I’d felt lousy doing it, not only because I knew that she probably felt like shit for being rejected, but because I really and truly wanted to spend time with her. I wanted to get to know her better, and I definitely wanted to have sex with her again.

  It was all too easy for me to remember what our first—and so far only—time had been like. Fuck. Autumn had felt so good, so right, wrapped around me. I wanted more, but I had promised not to get involved with her.

  I gritted my teeth. I had told Bob Nelson that I would stay away from his daughter, since he’d gotten the red flag from the time I’d already spent with her. I needed to keep to that promise, or I’d be out of a job.

  Worse than that, I could screw things up not just for me, but for Autumn, as well. I could make things more tense between her and Tuck, and I could end up making drama for her. It was best if I distracted myself as much as possible.

  I scrubbed at my face with my hands, trying to decide what to do with myself. If I stayed home, I knew I’d spend the rest of the night thinking about what Autumn was doing, wishing I’d said yes to her invitation—Bob be damned.

  I already wished I’d said yes to Autumn’s invitation, even if the outing wasn’t all that exciting. Going to the mall, hanging out with her friends, wasn’t a great outing, but it would at least have given me some time with Autumn away from her family.

  And that was the danger. I wanted to spend time with her; I wanted to get to know her. I wanted to be with her. I was already too late in terms of having feelings for her, but I could at least keep myself from acting on them. I could keep myself out of trouble, keep her from having anything more than passing, regular attraction to me.

  But I needed to find something to do with myself so I wouldn’t dwell. I thought about what I could do; I needed to get out of the house, but the idea of going out with any of my girl friends wasn’t exactly alluring. I knew I’d spend the entire time comparing any of them to Autumn.

  “That just leaves one thing,” I said to myself. I found my phone plugged into the wall and took it off the charger.

  I called up my friend Drake. “Hey, man,” I said, sitting back down on the couch. “You get paid this week?”

  “Yeah, man, sure enough,” he said. “You got something in mind for me to blow my money on?”

  I laughed. “A few beers, maybe catch a game somewhere?” I didn’t really like the idea, but it would be better than sitting at home, stewing about the girl I shouldn’t even have ever kissed, much less had sex with.

  “I think they opened up that new laser tag place in town,” Drake told me. “We could check that out. Get a couple of the other guys from the crew.” He had worked with me on more than one construction job; there was a group of us that tended to do the work on a regular basis, and we’d become friends over time.

  “Sounds good, my man,” I said. “Let’s call up some of the guys and make a night of it: grab some burgers and beers, get our laser tag on, and all that.”

  “I’ll call Joe and Skinny Pete, if you’ll get Harold and Max,” he told me.

  “I can do that. Catch you at…” I checked the time. “Say six? Give us plenty of time to get our drink on a bit before we head over to the laser tag place.”

  “I’m down,” Drake agreed.

  I hung up and started the process of getting ready to go out. First, I called Harold and Max, let them know the idea that Drake and I had worked out; Harold had a girl he was going out with, but Max was down for a guys’ night out.

  I had already taken a shower, but I changed out of my pajamas and into a clean pair of jeans and a button-down shirt—not something super nice, but something that I could wear out with my buddies without looking like a total scrub. I shaved and pulled my hair back out of my face, and tried not to think about how nice it would be to be getting ready to go somewhere with Autumn instead.

  Stop thinking about that. You’re going to be hanging out with the guys.

  I knew I’d have to make an effort to find a pretty girl to flirt with, not that there were that many in the town that I didn’t already know, but there was always a chance that I would find someone. Even if I did run into someone I knew already, I told myself I would make the effort.

  I needed to do whatever it took to get Autumn out of my mind and to keep my promise to Bob Nelson.

  Not to mention that Tuck clearly has issues with me spending any time with his sister. That was another reason not to let myself get involved with Autumn, and to push her away: Tuck had been getting increasingly aggressive ever since I’d started flirting with her. I needed to put some distance between myself and his beautiful sister if I wanted to be able to keep my job for the rest of the season.

  As soon as I was ready, I headed into town, trying to find my way to the bar we normally met up at. It was a little hole-in-the-wall dive with the best burgers in three counties, according to one of the newspapers. Just then, burgers and beer sounded like the best possible thing in the world to me.

  I wondered what Autumn was doing with her friends—was she getting the manicure she had talked about, or had she gone shopping? It was too early for her to have gone home, at least I thought so, but I had no idea what she might actually be doing.

  Since I was going to dinner with my buds, I thought it was possible she might have grabbed dinner with her friends, as well. I pictured her in my mind, seated at a table somewhere in the mall, at the food court, maybe having Chinese, or Chik-Fil-A, talking to her friends about Addie. If I’d been there, I told myself, I would just have been in the way of that. Even if she had invited me.

  Stop thinking about her and focus on the night out. I pulled into the parking lot at Dave’s Last Resort and spotted Drake’s beat up old car already parked i
n one corner. We were a bit before the dinner rush, which was good; we’d have time for a couple of beers, maybe a couple of shots, and then we could head over to the laser tag place. I parked and walked around to the front of the building.

  “Cade! Brother, it’s good to see you,” Skinny Pete said, as soon as I walked in.

  “You, too, man,” I told him. He slapped my shoulder and led me over to the table.

  “I hear you’ve been working out at Bob Nelson’s ranch,” Max said.

  “All season,” I confirmed. A waitress came and I looked over the specials; there was a deal on Jameson with a beer back, and I ordered it, along with the bacon cheeseburger and fries. Drake had already ordered a basket of deep fried pickles and some mushroom caps for the table.

  “I didn’t know they were hiring,” Joe said.

  I shrugged. “I saw an ad in the paper and answered it. It’s been a pretty good gig. They might bring on someone else next year if I work out.”

  “Autumn Nelson is easy on the eyes,” Skinny Pete pointed out.

  “Ah, let’s not talk about her,” I told him. “I made a promise to Bob Nelson that I wouldn’t get distracted by his daughter. It was his condition for hiring me.”

  “Good man,” Drake said, smiling slightly. “I’d do the same thing if I had a daughter who’d just had a kid less than a year before, with a guy who ran off on her—don’t want her heart getting broken again.”

  I shook my head. “Come on, guys. No more talk about her. I want to spend the next five hours not thinking about the farm, or the farmer’s daughter. Just guy shit, beers, and laser tag. Okay?”

  “We can talk about that fine waitress over there,” Max said, nodding in the direction of one of the other bar maids. I’d known her in high school—hell, I’d known almost everyone in town who was between the ages of twenty-five and thirty in high school—but I had to admit that Max wasn’t wrong.

  “Not bad at all,” I agreed. “Heather Johnson. Man, it’s been ages since I saw her.”

  We chatted about Heather for a while, and then my beer and shot came, and then the burgers. I put Autumn out of my mind and tried to focus on spending time with my friends.

  I started to relax a little bit and got into the spirit of boys’ night. I told myself that I was going to enjoy laser tag, I was going to get just a little bit drunk, I was going to ogle pretty girls, and I was going to pretend like I didn’t have any feelings that would make my life complicated.

  I knocked back my shot of whiskey and drank down a few gulps of beer. “I heard that they have a hot girl working at the laser tag place,” Max said.

  “That sounds promising,” Skinny Pete told him.

  I laughed. “Not like you’re going to ask for her number, anyway,” I pointed out.

  “You might, though,” Drake said, pointing at me.

  “Probably not.” I shrugged off the idea. “I’m focused on my work these days.”

  “All work and no play makes Cade a dull boy,” Drake countered. “You should play the field. Get your rocks off while there’s still women interested in hooking up.”

  I shook my head; it was going to definitely be a guys’ night, but I didn’t think I was going to have all that much luck getting Autumn out of my head.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Autumn

  I had been avoiding Tuck, or at least being alone with Tuck, ever since he’d come to my place on the property and accused me of trying to form some kind of bizarre conspiracy with Cade to keep Tuck from inheriting the farm from our dad one day.

  Since Tuck seemed to be functioning just fine in every other sense, Mom had thought—and I’d agreed—that it was best to relieve some of the tension.

  I shouldn’t have taken it so much to heart that Cade had apparently lost interest in me, especially since Tucker had had such bizarre ideas about Cade and me colluding together. But Cade didn’t know about the incident between me and my brother; therefore, there was no real reason for him to avoid me, other than lost interest.

  I knew that I should be relieved at least as far as my relationship with my brother was concerned that I didn’t have anything anymore with Cade, but I couldn’t make myself feel good about it. I thought I deserved more than just Cade’s avoidance. I deserved to hear from him that he had simply lost interest.

  Mom had decided to take over bringing the guys lunch and snacks out in the fields. I needed to avoid Tuck, and I didn’t want to see Cade, so she had been more than happy to do it for me, in exchange for me covering some of her usual chores around the farm. I still cooked dinner half the time, but I didn’t have to deal with either of the two men who were causing me so much trouble in my mind.

  I stood outside hanging laundry, thinking about what I would do the next time that I had an opportunity to go into town just to amuse myself. Mom and Dad both had told me that it was a good practice. I came back from my little outings refreshed, more energetic, and more positive. I had to admit that I felt better after my dates with friends.

  Maybe we could go to Andrews Park, I thought to myself. We can put together a picnic, hang out at the lake, maybe do a little sunbathing… It sounded nice; but it would have been nicer still if I could do it with Cade instead of my friends.

  I shook off the thought. It wasn’t any use to think of how nice it would be to do something with Cade. I wasn’t going to be doing anything with Cade in the near future.

  “Autumn.” I looked over the clothesline and saw Tuck walking towards me. My heart beat a little bit faster in my chest, but I made myself keep working. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that I was still a bit shaken by his random attack on me.

  “Hey, Tuck,” I said, straightening the sheet on the clothesline and grabbing pins out of the hanging bag on the rope. “Something up?” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he said, stepping under the clothesline and coming to a stop a few feet away from me.

  “About what?” I wiped my damp hands on my pants and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Stop looking at me like that, Sis,” he said, looking away from me. His cheeks were pink with more than just the sun.

  “Like what?”

  “Autumn.” He met my gaze and frowned. “Look, I know I was an asshole to you the other day.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “The other day? Whatever are you talking about, brother?” I held his gaze until he looked away again.

  “I shouldn’t have accused you of having some kind of scheme going with Cade,” he said, sounding more than a little sheepish. “I’m just…I guess…paranoid about what my future is going to look like, and I took it out on you.”

  “Oh?” I kept my face neutral. “Refresh my memory if you would.”

  “Autumn, don’t be like this,” Tucker said. “I’m trying to apologize to you.”

  “So apologize,” I told him. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closing his eyes and then opening them again.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry I went off on you like that, especially because Addie was in the next room. I was an asshole and it was uncalled for.”

  I finally let myself crack a smile. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the apology. I accept it.” I shook my head and uncrossed my arms.

  “Cade’s not a bad guy, you know,” Tuck said, kicking at the grass under his feet.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. I turned back to the laundry basket on the ground and plucked a towel out of it to hang up.

  “I mean, he’s a decent worker and seems mostly like a good guy,” he continued.

  “I’m glad you and he are able to be friends again,” I said. “I just…” I shrugged. “I think I was mistaken.”

  “Mistaken how?”

  I glanced at my brother. “I thought he was interested in me,” I admitted. “There were some times, when we hung out... But he’s been avoiding me for the last couple of weeks. Even more than I’ve been avoiding you!” I ga
ve my brother a little grin.

  “So, you think he’s lost interest? Why would he?” Tuck frowned and shook his head. “There’s no reason why he should.”

  “I figure it was just one of those things,” I told him. “He was into the hunt, not into me.”

  Tuck kicked at the grass again. “I don’t know about that. I mean, he did promise Dad that he wouldn’t get involved with you, right? Maybe Dad noticed things were getting a little more hot and heavy between the two of you and had a word with him.”

  I shrugged again. “Either way,” I said. “I probably should just let it go. Either he’s lost interest in me, or he isn’t going to be able to act on any interest he does have in me until after the season is over. Why should I wait around to see which answer it is, when I can just get on with my life?”

  Tuck considered that, and I hung another towel and a few washcloths. “If you think you’ll be happier just letting it go, then you should do that,” Tuck told me. “Otherwise… I mean, I know you’ve got this incredibly active social life and all, but maybe you should give him the benefit of a few months to see if he’s just keeping away to keep his job or if he’s actually not interested in you.”

  I looked at my brother doubtfully. “You know, I’m not sure whether you’re more annoying when you think I’m colluding with Cade to cut you out of your inheritance or when you’re trying to advocate for him,” I told my brother. Tuck laughed.

  “I need to get back out there,” he said, coming in closer to me to give me a quick hug. “We’re okay, right?” I shrugged, but I paused in hanging up the laundry to let him hug me.

  “I’m still annoyed at you, but I accept your apology,” I told him. “I’m mostly just glad you’re apparently not losing your mind.”