by Lucy Score
Phoebe’s stomach growled. “Nope. Pizza is perfect.”
She climbed out of her seat before John could make it around to open her door, but she wasn’t fast enough to beat him to the front door of the pizza shop. She stepped inside and into sensory overload.
The usual pizza place scents of marinara and oregano enveloped her. But that’s where typical stopped. The shop’s walls, carpeted in orange shag, held black and white prints of the Woodstock greats. Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie. There were a dozen tables, half of them occupied. Each table had its own lava lamp in blues and oranges, and the salt and pepper shakers, when sat side-by-side, formed green and white peace signs. Phoebe sniffed the air as a server carrying a pie with a tomato sauce peace sign squeezed past.
“What brings you off the farm tonight, John?” A woman with ebony, waist-length dreadlocks and the flawless skin of a Cover Girl model leaned against the hostess stand. She wore a dashiki in faded burnt oranges and reds.
“Got an unexpected extra mouth to feed,” he said, jerking his thumb in Phoebe’s direction. “Lebanon bologna wasn’t going to cut it.”
The way the hostess grinned up at him, Phoebe guessed that might have been a slice of John Pierce humor.
“Phoebe, this is Bobby. She owns this establishment and makes the best sauce in five counties. Bobby, this is Phoebe the farm hand/grad student I was misled to believe was a man.”
Phoebe thrust her hand out to Bobby. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your shop is incredible, and I promise to enjoy it, even though I’m not a man.” She sent John a glowering look over her shoulder.
Bobby shook her hand with a firm grip and a white-toothed grin. “Man or woman, you’re welcome here.”
“That’s very open-minded of you, Bobby.” Phoebe sent another pointed look in John’s direction. “I appreciate that.”
It was John’s turn to roll his eyes.
Bobby guided them to a purple upholstered booth along the wall under a framed picture of Janis Joplin in all her round glasses and headband glory. Phoebe took the side with her back to the wall so she could enjoy the comings and goings of Peace of Pizza’s patrons.
It was an eclectic crowd. Customers in business suits shared tables with others dressed in decades-old denim and faded 60s rock band t-shirts. There were more headbands than perms, and Phoebe realized that, for once, she fit right in with her long, straight hair. If John let her stay, maybe she could find one of those wide, tie-dye headbands. A souvenir, a memento of her summer here.
He had to let her stay, she thought, fingernails digging into her palms. Everything she’d been working for was riding on him.
John pushed his unopened menu to the edge of the table. “Pizza?” he asked, interlacing his long fingers on the table.
“Loaded?”
“Pepperoni,” he countered.
“Pepperoni, sausage, and green pepper.”
“Deal.” He offered her his hand over the table. “Large?”
Phoebe accepted his hand and shook, trying not to enjoy the callused texture of his palm against hers. Her stomach gave an unladylike gurgle. “Definitely large.” She set her menu aside and mirrored his posture. “You strike me as a man who values when someone gets to the point.”
John didn’t say anything to acknowledge that he’d heard her, but his eyes, reflecting the light of the turquoise bubbles in the lava lamp, held her gaze.
“Let me tell you exactly what you’d be getting by letting me stay for the summer,” Phoebe insisted.
He unfolded his hands palms up. “By all means.”
“I’m strong and have a ridiculous energy level. I only need six hours of sleep a night and work my ass off every damn day. I’ve worked on my grandfather’s farm every summer since I was seven years old. I’m not afraid of hard work or heavy lifting, and I’m so close to finishing my master’s degree that I can taste it. I just need a sliver of your time and some hands-on experience to make this happen. I need your help, John. I can’t do it without you.”
She put it all on the table and gave him her best pleading look. Please, John.
“My future is in your hands.”
Chapter Five
John was already regretting his decision when his feet hit the bedroom floor the next morning. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour yet. He could at least wrangle a little peace and quiet before his new “farm hand” woke up and started rattling off questions like a damned parakeet.
He’d told her she could stay, even voiced his “concerns” that the work would be too much for her. If Phoebe had picked up on his warning hint that he wasn’t going to go easy on her, she’d brushed it off and looked at him with those glass green eyes, and he found himself nodding dumbly.
She hadn’t thanked him profusely, tears glistening and lip trembling. She’d merely nodded smugly as if she’d expected that answer all along.
He’d at least had enough wits about him to put a trial period on it. She had until the fourth of July to prove herself to a) be helpful and b) not be a nuisance. She’d agreed and immediately forgot about b, demanding to know the story of every person present in Peace of Pizza.
He came home with a dull headache, one measly leftover slice of pizza, and a house guest for the next two weeks.
John crept down the stairs determined not to wake Phoebe so he could at least have a cup of coffee in peace. He was debating whether he could get away with making that lone slice of pizza his breakfast when he realized the kitchen lights were already on.
“Morning,” Phoebe called cheerfully from the stove where she was scrambling something in his one and only fry pan.
Goddamn it. Just half an hour of quiet. Was that too much to ask?
She nodded toward the coffee maker as it sputtered to life on the counter. “Best part of waking up,” she said with the perkiness of a true morning person. John skirted around her and caught a whiff of his own shampoo in her hair.
He blamed his knee-jerk arousal on his lack of sleep and his foggy brain. He’d slept like the dead alone in this house for a year now. But Phoebe’s presence across the hall—on his only set of sheets, no less—had dominated his brain for the majority of the night. He’d counted ceiling tiles for hours. There were one hundred and forty-four of them in his bedroom. He’d triple checked before finally falling asleep into a restless dream about green eyes begging for help.
“Hey, where’s your TV? I poked my head into the living room, but I didn’t see one.”
“Don’t have one,” he said gruffly. And he was sure she’d have a thousand things to say about that. But he changed the subject before she could. “Did you sleep well?” John knew it was mean, but he hoped she’d slept like shit.
“Slept like there was a carbon monoxide leak in my room,” Phoebe said, plating up fluffy yellow eggs. Two slices of bread popped up like a jack-in-the-box out of the jaundice yellow toaster his mother had given him when she and his father had packed up for their big move west.
She handed him the plates jerking her chin toward the table, and while he stared stupidly at the breakfast in his hands, Phoebe efficiently filled two thick handled mugs with coffee.
“So,” she said, setting the mugs down on the table. “What are we doing today?”
He followed suit with the plates and pulled out a chair. John couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down for breakfast. Usually it was a bowl of cereal eaten standing up or a piece of toast on his way out the door.
He reached for his coffee with a twinge of desperation. “Feed the cow and turn her out.”
“You mentioned a limping cow yesterday. Is she livestock?”
He shook his head. “She’s a pet. She was a neglect case from over in Cleary,” he said shooting his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the neighboring town. “The vet needed a place to keep her while she healed, and I opened my big, fat mouth. Now Pierce Acres has a cow.”
It was the most words he’d sp
oken pre-dawn in years. But it still wasn’t enough for Phoebe.
“After our pet cow, what then?” She dug into the eggs with enthusiasm.
Maybe he could put Phoebe on shoveling out the grain bin that needed emptied while he handled the roadside mowing. He’d get some quiet time before lunch. If he gave her too much information up front, she’d be asking him questions about the sprayer apertures and his life goals while they were weeding the borders of his fields.
“Let’s just start with Melanie and go from there.”
She put her fork down. “You named your cow Melanie?”
The piece of toast stuck in John’s throat. “She, uh, has these deep, soulful brown eyes. Reminded me of my girlfriend in high school.”
Phoebe’s laugh lit up the room brighter than the basket weave pendant light over their heads. “Does human Melanie know about her namesake?”
John swallowed hard, the coffee warming a path to his stomach. “I hope not. She moved away after she graduated from college. Married a dentist and lives in Milwaukee.”
“So, Blue Moon isn’t one of those small towns where everyone knows everything and someone didn’t write Melanie a letter saying ‘You’ll never guess what John Pierce named his new cow.’”
Shit. That was exactly the kind of town Blue Moon was.
He rose and carried his dishes to the sink, guzzling the last of his coffee. “Let’s get this day started,” he grumbled.
--------
He stuck her in the grain bin on purpose, Phoebe thought as her shovel scraped metal under the last dredges of grain. Her grandfather had done the same thing when he was tired of answering her incessant questions. But she couldn’t help it. As a child, she’d been endlessly fascinated by every aspect of life, and adulthood had done little to dull her interest. It was interesting to note that her questions seemed to have the same effect on John as they did her grandfather: one word answers that devolved into grunts and then finally redirection.
She wondered if farmers by design preferred solitude. That kind of life would never suit her. She needed people and stories and connection. Squatting on a piece of land and only seeing your neighbors every other week when you rode into town for supplies sounded depressing. It was why she was more interested in the business of farming than the actual field work.
But there was something to be said for the satisfaction of manual labor. The familiarity of the work, the shuffle and scoop motion designed to save lower backs, reminded her of summers that seemed to stretch on forever. Of her grandmother hanging wash on the line in the backyard, and strawberry preserves in neat rows on the cellar shelves, and the smell of her grandfather’s pipe tobacco.
John thought he was torturing her with the menial task, but he was providing an unintended and very pleasant trip down memory lane.
So, she did what she’d done then, entertained herself by singing her favorite songs of the ’70s. Her words, accented by the sharp slice of shovel, echoed all around her off the metal of the bin. There was barely a foot of grain left in the bottom of the bin, and she figured she could get about half of it fed through the auger before John came to check on her progress.
She switched from “I Will Survive” to an enthusiastic rendition of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” adding a little swing to her hips with each shuffling step forward.
“Didn’t know this was American Bandstand in here.” John’s voice bounced off the curving metal walls, cutting off her superb solo.
“Didn’t know someone without a TV could be up on pop culture,” Phoebe quipped back. She paused in her shoveling to swipe an arm across her sweaty forehead. He’d given up on her solitary confinement sooner than she’d thought he would, and Phoebe felt a twinge of disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to blow his mind with her shoveling prowess.
John eyed the floor of the bin and silently picked up the second shovel leaning against the wall. Together they dug back into the grain, and Phoebe gave the silence a few minutes. When it became unbearable, she started humming and soon after that returned to her homage to Michael Jackson.
John didn’t join in. He didn’t seem like the singalong type, but Phoebe noted that his shovel scoops were timed with her beat, and that made her smile. She stole glances as they circled in opposite directions and wondered dispassionately what made men doing physical labor so appealing.
The sinewy bulge of his biceps, the sweat stains on his t-shirt, the way his Levi’s hugged those muscular thighs. All those parts added up to a pretty spectacular whole. She wasn’t feeling so objective now, Phoebe noticed. But she’d never doubted John’s physical attraction. What she’d yet to nail down was his analytical sex appeal. Was he kind? Smart? Funny? Interesting?
He was sending her mixed messages. First, he was beyond reluctant to welcome her into his life for the summer and made her beg to stay. Not a good start. Then, he’d stripped the sheets off his own bed and put them on hers. She’d fallen asleep wrapped in the scent of him, subconsciously finding it a comfort for her first night in a new place. Thoughtful and generous. But he treated her questions—and her presence—like a nuisance. Irritating and pompous.
To Phoebe, her questions served dual purposes. They gave her information that she sought for her thesis, and they added to her measure of the man. Unfortunately, John hadn’t wholeheartedly committed himself to being the A to her Q’s. Phoebe knew herself well enough to know she’d tolerate his intolerance only for so long before she set him straight. Currently she was pretending to be a polite houseguest, but with her entire future and her family’s well-being in John’s hands, she couldn’t afford to stay politely patient.
She noticed the change in his pace. He was shoveling faster now, and she adjusted to match. Her breath was coming harder now, and the sweat was running freely, but Phoebe could pull her weight. She could hang with the big boys. She’d proven it before and wasn’t opposed to proving it again to a new audience.
There was nothing on God’s green earth that was going to make her stop first. Even when her low back gave a creaking warning and when she felt the definitive beginnings of blisters rising on her thumb and palm. She didn’t stop until he took the shovel from her rigor mortis fingers.
“It’s not a race,” he said, looking amused.
“That’s usually what guys say when I beat them.” Her flippancy would have come off better if she wasn’t so winded.
John tossed the shovel down and quick as lightning reached for her hands. He turned them palms up and examined the red welts. “First of all, a good job is better than a fast job. Secondly, a farm hand is only as valuable as the hand they’re able to give,” he said quietly.
“There’s nothing wrong with being quick, and I can work through blisters,” Phoebe protested.
“The point is you don’t have to. You could have taken it slower, worn gloves, taken breaks,” John pointed out. “Now, we have to stop what we’re doing and go patch you up.”
He was chastising her like a child, and Phoebe bristled at it.
“I’m perfectly capable of slapping on a few bandages just fine by myself. You don’t need to be so inconvenienced.”
He looked at her, his mouth grim. “There’s a difference between rushing through something to get to the other side and doing it right.”
“There’s also something to be said for speed and efficiency over plodding,” Phoebe shot back.
“Let’s go,” he said gesturing toward the doorway.
“Oh, after you,” Phoebe insisted. She smirked at the tension in his shoulders as she filed out after him.
Chapter Six
He wasn’t exactly gentle when he put the bandages on her, but he didn’t slap them in place either. And maybe he did take a little extra time smoothing the adhesive down, but that was more to annoy her than it was to enjoy the spark of awareness he felt every time he touched her.
“If I were Man Allen, would you be bandaging me up?” Phoebe demanded. She sw
ung her legs impatiently from her perch on top of the table.
He raised his gaze from her palms to her face. She was annoyed. Good. So was he. “Man Allen probably wouldn’t fuss about it nearly as much as you are.” John tightened the lid on the mercurochrome and boxed up the unused bandages.
“I’m not fussing!”
“Now you’re pouting,” he pointed out, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d flicked a finger over her lower lip, which was most definitely protruding.
It felt like the kind of static shock from wearing thick socks on carpet in the winter. A discharge of energy, a spark. Whatever it was, they both felt it. John took a quick step back and busied himself with his meager first aid supplies.
Phoebe remained—thankfully—quiet. She looked down at his handiwork on her palms but said nothing.
He cursed himself. Being attracted to Phoebe was not part of the plan. In fact, it was the worst thing he could do. He didn’t want to be sharing his home, his farm, his days with anyone. And the sooner Phoebe gave up and packed up, the sooner he could get back to his life just the way he liked it. Wanting her was out of the question.
He shoved the bandages and supplies back in the cabinet and looked at the clock on the wall. “Might as well have lunch while we’re in here.”
Phoebe slid off the table, suspiciously subdued. “Can I help?”
“If you promise not to get any blister pus in the sandwiches.”
She blinked those wide eyes at him. “I’m sorry. Did you just make a joke?” She took four slices of bread from the loaf on the counter.
John handed her two plates and opened the refrigerator. “No. I really don’t want you to get pus in my sandwich.”
“Is it because you aren’t around people very often that you don’t know how to be funny?” she asked.
“I like being alone. There’s no pressure to be anything other than what I am,” he said pointedly.