She shakes her head. "My family owned a distillery in Kentucky," she says. "Bourbon."
"Kentucky bourbon," I say. "That's southern."
She winks. "It's 'bout as southern as it gets," she says. "Thanks for the dinner."
I'm standing there on her doorstep, and it has to be those damn green eyes and that red hair and the way her lips fall open like they do that makes me say what I say next, as I turn to leave. "I'll be here tomorrow at seven," I say.
Fuck. What the hell am I doing?
"What do you mean?" she calls after me.
"You need a foreman, right?"
What the hell am I getting myself into?
CHAPTER SIX
Autumn
After Olivia is asleep, I lie in bed with my eyes closed, trying to sleep. But all I can see is him. Luke.
He's irritating as hell. Cocky, crude, arrogant, used to telling women what to do -- like the way he barged into the house and decided to rummage around my kitchen and cook.
Okay, so the cooking part wasn't really bad. That part was really good, actually. It's been a long time since a man has cooked for me. Scratch that. Make that ever. Edward wasn't big into cooking for me. Or doing much of anything else for me, come to think of it.
Luke, on the other hand…looks like he knows how to do lots of things for women. The thought of what he could do for me makes heat rush through my body. It's been a long time – embarrassingly long – since I've gotten laid.
Being pregnant and having a baby doesn't exactly make me marketable in terms of dating. My vibrator has become my best friend.
That's only slightly depressing.
I turn over in bed, trying to put side the thoughts of Luke Saint that keep running through my head. Like how he looked at me when he came walking up out of the orchard -- angry, soot smudged on his chiseled face, his shirt clinging to his body…
Shit, I need to get laid. By someone my own age. Someone who's normal, stable. Not some young guy who lives down by the damn creek with his dog.
I know Luke's type – guys like him come through West Bend, doing seasonal work in the summer, skiing and snow-boarding in the winter. They're adrenaline-seeking, responsibility-avoidant, womanizing jocks who just want to get stoned and get laid.
The way his phone was blowing up at dinner, with texts from some girl tells me all I need to know about him. I've already had a womanizing bastard in my life. I definitely don't need to think about getting laid by another one.
I groan, reaching into the bedside table to pull out my vibrator. Two years of pent-up frustration is obviously making me crazy.
Sliding my hand underneath my soft cotton nightshirt, I cover my breast with my palm, trying to bring to mind the image of…someone else, anyone else except Luke Saint. I run through a litany of sexy male movie stars in my head, but all I can see when I close my eyes is that smug, self-assured grin of Luke's.
I imagine his lips moving across the tops of my breasts, then down lower as he takes my breast in his mouth. I run my fingers over my breast, playing with my nipple, mimicking the way his tongue moves around in circles in my fantasy. When I slide my fingers between my legs, I picture his fingers doing the work that mine are doing on my clit.
I can practically taste him on my lips as I picture myself taking his cock in my mouth, wrapping my lips around it. His cock is the last thing in the world I should be thinking about, and yet it's the only thing I can think about.
A small moan escapes my lips as I press my vibrator between my legs, against my entrance. I'm wet, a bundle of need and want and ache, and the vibrator isn't what I want.
When I slip it inside me, I'm imagining Luke between my legs, Luke's cock inside me. I imagine him riding me, my hands on his hard chest as he thrusts inside of me, harder and harder until I'm close to the edge.
"Come for me, baby," he says, and I come harder and faster than I have in a long time. But when I lie back against the pillow in my bed, the ache between my legs is still there. I'm still not satisfied.
Damn it, I think. I really need to get laid. But definitely not by Luke Saint.
***
He's walking up to the house, his Labrador trailing behind him, wearing a light blue t-shirt under his jacket that somehow makes his blue eyes look even bluer. The dog runs up onto the porch, and Olivia squeals as the dog brushes up alongside her and then licks the side of her face.
"Olivia," I warn.
"She's fine," Luke says. "Lucy is real tolerant."
"Olivia might not be," I say, eyeing her warily. "I'm waiting for her to reach out and grab a handful of fur and yank it. Toddlers can't be trusted, you know. Or…well, I guess you don't know."
Luke shrugs. "I imagine they're a lot like dogs. Except you're not allowed to kennel the kid, right?" I give him a look and he laughs. "Don't look at me like that. I do know that much about kids, Red."
"Are you seriously going to come out here and be my foreman?"
"I've been looking over the orchard," he says.
"Right now?"
"Sweetheart, you're up late," he says.
"It's eight in the morning."
"I've been here since six. I couldn't sleep."
"So you just thought you'd come over here and walk around my property?"
He shrugs. "I needed to take a look around, see what I was up against," he says. "Nice piece of land you've got here."
"Glad you approve."
"The cidery was too easy to get into, you know," he says. "You've got a lot of expensive equipment sitting out there."
"It should be locked up," I say, suddenly defensive.
"Let me guess," he says. "That was your foreman's job?"
"Are you going to keep lecturing me?" I ask. "It was part of his job, as a matter of fact. We had a problem, a couple weeks back, some guys poking around the property."
"What kind of guys?"
I wave my hand dismissively. "No big deal," I say. "Some guys from that mining company, the one buying up property in town. They came around here wanting to do some surveying. I wasn't here when it happened, and the foreman said he didn't let them on the place."
"Are you thinking about selling?" Luke asks. "A lot of people around here are, I've heard."
"So some mining company can come in and tear down the orchard I've just gotten started?" I ask. "Screw that."
"All right then," he says, walking down the porch steps toward his truck. His dog perks her head up and follows after her owner, leaving Olivia sobbing with disappointment at the fact that her living plaything just trotted off.
For a second, I think Luke is leaving, but instead he brings two paper bags from his truck and hands me one.
I look inside. "You brought groceries?"
"By your cranky-ass demeanor I'm going to assume you didn't eat breakfast yet," he says. "I think they call that hangry."
"I was planning on having coffee," I say.
Luke snorts. "That ain't breakfast," he says. "What's wrong with you? Doesn't your kid eat breakfast?"
A surge of irritation rushes through me, and I take Olivia's hand in my empty one. "Yes, she eats breakfast," I say. "She just had oatmeal. Wait, are you just letting yourself inside my house again?"
Luke holds open the door for me. "Has anyone ever told you that you need a lesson in accepting help?"
I bristle at his words. "I don't need help, Luke Saint," I say, following him into the kitchen. Olivia walks with me, babbling happily: "Saint, Saint."
"Hah, she's like a little parrot," Luke says, setting a bag on the kitchen counter and removing food items one by one.
"Which is why you should watch your mouth."
"Me?" he asks, turning around. He takes the bag out of my hands. "I think you're just as foul-mouthed as I am, and that kid of yours is going to wind up talking filthier than a sailor because of it."
"I am not."
He raises his eyebrows. "If you say so, Red," he says, grinning. "You've got a naughty side."
"Wait
, is that what all of this is?" I ask, gesturing at the bags on the counter. "This accepting help nonsense? Is this your attempt to flirt with me?"
The corner of his mouth pulls up, and he looks at me with a crooked smile that somehow makes him look more arrogant than before. When he leans in close to me, he speaks low and graveled, and his voice sends a shiver of arousal ricocheting through my body. "Trust me, Red," he says. "When I try to flirt with you, you'll know it."
I swear that everything that comes out of this man's mouth sounds like it's dripping with sex. I remind myself that this kind of guy is exactly the opposite of what I should be looking for in a man. I should be looking for stable, not oozing-sex-from-every-pore-of-his-body. Clearing my throat, I pause before I speak, trying to shake off the lust that I fear will cloud my voice. "Good," I say. "Because if you were flirting, I'd remind you that I'm practically old enough to be your mother."
Luke chortles, and when Olivia hears him laugh, she claps loudly. "Saint! Saint!" she yells, before darting across the tile floor to the other side of the kitchen, where she parks herself at the refrigerator, rearranging letter-shaped magnets.
"See? She thinks that's just as ridiculous as I do," he says. "My mother. You're ten years older than me."
"Well, I'm too old to have some jock barging into my kitchen and telling me I don't know how to cook or run my orchard."
Luke looks down at me, his blue eyes flashing. "You're damn uppity for someone who needs something from me."
Someone who needs something from me. My mind goes immediately to sex and I hate myself for it. "Uppity? I didn't ask you to come in here and cook. Or poke around my orchard."
He leans in close to me. Too close. I can smell him, soap and aftershave, clean and masculine. "I wasn't poking around," he says, his voice low. "And if I did, you wouldn't be complaining."
Warmth rushes through me at the thought of Luke poking around anywhere, and I force the thought out of my head. "I don't need you. For the record."
The way he looks at me makes me blush even harder. "We both know that's not true, Red," he says.
"I don't," I say, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. "And this charming little flirting act of yours might work on girls your own age, but it doesn’t work on me."
Luke grins. "So you admit it's charming, then?"
"I said it was an act."
"You said charming," he says, pulling coffee from his bag. "Now, can you make coffee, or is your coffee just as crap as your food?"
I take the bag of coffee from his hand, groaning in frustration. "You don't have many friends, do you?"
"I could ask the same thing of you, sweetheart," he says. "So why don't you just make the coffee and get out of my kitchen?"
"It's my kitchen," I say as I fill the pot with water at the kitchen sink. I glance over my shoulder at Olivia, who's happily pulled off all the magnets from the refrigerator and surrounded herself with them on the floor. "And you're working for me. Apparently. Which we haven't even discussed. Aren't you concerned it's slightly inappropriate, cooking your employer breakfast?"
Luke walks up behind me, his hand on the side of the sink. His breath is warm on the back of my neck, and I swear that as soon as it hits my skin, I stop breathing. My heart thumps loudly in my chest, and the water overflows from the coffee pot, running down the sides and over my hands, but I don't move. It's like I'm completely paralyzed.
Luke reaches around me with his other hand, shutting off the water. His arm grazes my shoulder and sends a jolt of electricity runs through my body. "This is nowhere near inappropriate, Red," he whispers, his voice quiet, his words barely even audible with his lips pressed against my ear. "Inappropriate would be if I cooked you breakfast in the morning, after you came on my tongue the night before."
I swallow hard, my heart beating so fast I swear it's going to beat right out of my chest. Then he walks back to the counter, nonchalant like he didn't just talk about me coming on his tongue, and busies himself with preparing breakfast. I stand at the sink for a moment, my hand gripping the edge tightly, and when I glance over at him, he looks at me and winks.
Damn it, I think. Hiring him is a very bad idea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Luke
"Good morning, Autumn!" The front door slams and Olivia squeals, tottering headlong down the hallway. "Hey Liv-livs!"
"In here," Autumn calls.
The girl arrives in the kitchen, with Olivia perched on her hip, and stops short when she looks at me, not even bothering to hide her raised eyebrows. "Oh," she says, smiling. "I didn't know you had company."
"He's not company," Autumn says, shaking her head. Autumn's face flushes nearly as red as her hair, and she looks guilty as sin, like we were caught with our pants down around our ankles or something.
Not that I haven't been thinking about what that would be like with this woman.
There's just something about that uptight, haughty attitude that makes me want to get her to let loose. She's not even my type – too straight-laced for my taste – yet all I could think about after I left her place last night was running my hands down her sweet curves, covering my mouth with hers.
"Greta Hayward, meet Luke Saint," Autumn is saying, her voice interrupting my thoughts. "He's the new foreman," Autumn says. "I think. He helped with the fire."
"I'm a smoke jumper."
Autumn turns toward me. "You are?"
Greta clears her throat. "It looks like you have some business to take care of," she says. She gives Autumn a wide-eyed look that I definitely don't mistake. She's giving us space because she thinks there's something going on between us.
Autumn apparently doesn't notice that look. "You're a smoke jumper," she says.
"Yup."
"So you already have a job," she says. "You don't need this one."
I shrug. "I do and I don't."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks. "God, you're infuriating."
"I'm infuriating because I have a job?"
"No, you're infuriating because you don't give a straight answer to any question."
"Maybe you should stop being nosy, and I'll stop being evasive."
Autumn exhales heavily, and gives me a look out of the corner of her eye – pure irritation --that just makes me laugh. "You're already the worst employee ever."
"I can be a better one," I say softly, not bothering to disguise the innuendo evident in my tone.
What the hell is wrong with me? She's older, has a kid, and is completely not the kind of woman I need to be fucking around with.
Autumn's eyes widen, and when she stands up, I do something stupid. Reckless. I reach out and take hold of her wrist to stop her.
"What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me. I'd think she was pissed, except the way she looks at me with big eyes, the sharp inhale of breath, makes me absolutely sure she's not angry at all.
I turn her hand over, slowly tracing the inside of her wrist with my finger, and then running it across her palm. By the time I
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