She dreamed of the hired hand that night. In her dreams, she met him in the woods below the barn. He was naked and wild like some animal that belonged there in the shadow of the oaks and hickory trees, and he had taken her without a word, on his hands and knees in the leaf litter, while she forced her bottom up and opened her legs enough for him to see that she was ready, that her need matched his own.
He took her, hard and fierce, forcing the breath from her lungs, biting and kneading and growling. And she had growled back. Her nails had scored his ass in an effort to get him still deeper and the sound they’d made when they came together had startled the birds from their roosting places and raised the hackles of the night prowling beasts. And then he had lifted her into his arms, carried her into the cabin and laid her down on his bed. To her total surprise, that’s where she woke. Blinking, and wiping sleep from her eyes, she found herself still dressed, but tucked up nicely in the cabin, in the bed of the new hired hand, who was nowhere be to be found, but his bed and his room had that delicious smell of a virile male in his prime.
*****
Cassie hurried out the door and made a run for the house, too embarrassed to linger lest the man return. Of course her father was out doing the morning chores. She’d had a quick shower and returned to the ham and eggs breakfast Joanie shoved at her. Joanie was a family friend who had been helping out when she could since Merrill Fielding’s heart attack.
“Your dad knows you’re here. Simon told him he found you asleep under the oak trees. He figured you’d planned to overnight in the cabin, not realising it was occupied. He tucked you into his bed and slept in the barn.”
Well that explained a lot, Cassie thought, then she fought back a blush that felt like it would roast her cheeks off. That also meant that the man had known she was there. Christ! Had he known she’d watched him? Known what she was doing?
“Simon?” she asked, shovelling in her breakfast with her head down so Joanie couldn’t see the blush.
“Simon Dennis. That’s his name.” Joanie scrubbed at the window above the sink as though it had offended her somehow. “From Chicago, I hear. Had some high finance job there. Don’t know why he gave it up to play farmer, but from what I hear,” she turned back to Cassie to impart the latest, “he definitely doesn’t need the money.” She inspected her reflection in the glass.
“Nice that someone can afford to play farmer,” Cassie growled.
“Apparently he told your father he’d work for room and board. Course your father’d never allow that. He insisted on paying. Still, I think the two of them are up to something.”
Joanie finished the window, then grabbed up Cassie’s empty plate and refilled her iced tea glass in one exquisite example of the multi-tasking the woman was so good at. “He’s a looker, I’ll say that for him, and polite. I don’t think he’s ever done farm work before. Had some serious blisters his first week or so, but Merrill says he’s a fast learner and seems to have quite a good understanding of a working farm in spite of being a city boy.”
Suddenly Cassie’s insides turned to ice. What if he was thinking of buying Fielding Farm? Christ, farms all over the Midwest were being bought up by big corporations. The independent farmer was going the way of the Dodo bird. Well if he was thinking about buying them out, she’d have a thing or two to say about that. It was her farm, her home. And she wasn’t about to deed it over to some bored moneybags to whom it was just another business deal.
Joanie had left her with instructions on reheating the chicken potpie that she’d put in the refrigerator and Cassie was just about to head into the garden when the kitchen door blew open and her father practically dragged her from the chair into a bear hug. “Cassie-girl! You snuck in on me last night. What a great surprise to wake up and find my girl back home! I missed you darlin’.” He hugged her again.
She noticed immediately he felt much stronger than he had before. “I missed you too, Daddy.” He looked better too, she thought. Hopefully he was well on the mend, but all the worrying about paying the bills certainly couldn’t be helping much.
She smiled and nodded out the window to the bedraggled veg patch. “I noticed you’ve got a bumper crop of weeds this year. I was just about to head out and see if I could harvest some of them for you.”
Just then Simon Dennis stepped through the door, and damn if he didn’t look even better in sunlight than he did in moonlight. He was dressed in a well-sweated t-shirt and faded jeans, which he filled out nicely, and his smile was positively edible.
“Not just yet, Cassie.” Her dad nodded Simon in. “I suspect Joanie’s already told you all about Simon here. Knowing her, she probably knows more about him than he knows about himself, but this is the man in the flesh, who I understand was kind enough to give you his bed last night.”
If her blush mirrored Simon’s then her father surely had to suspect that it wasn’t as straightforward as that.
Simon’s eyes were dark green, she noticed, and his hair was almost, but not quite black. There was a smattering of freckles across his nose from hours spent in the intense sun, though from the looks of the rest of him, his complexion was just that shade of olive that tanned deliciously rather than burned.
Simon offered her a well-calloused hand. The firmness of his grip made her think of how good it must have felt wrapped around his cock last night, which in turn made her wonder how the hell she’d ended up in his bed.
“Pleased to meet you,” she croaked, trying not to blush, trying not to think about places on her own body where his hand would feel good. Christ! She so didn’t need to think about that with her dad standing right there between them.
Her father shifted nervously from foot-to-foot, and she suddenly realised that maybe her father did know, maybe her father was about to fire Simon. Oh God, she hoped not, because it was all her fault, staying to watch the man instead of leaving him to his private moment. But then again, they couldn’t afford Simon anyway, could they? Worse yet, what if her father had decided to sell out to Simon?
“Cassie.” Her father’s voice got her attention. “Sit down, sweetie. And Simon.” He nodded to the other side of the kitchen table, then he sat down nervously at the head of the table as though he were afraid the chair might bite him in the ass.
“Daddy? What’s going on?” Her voice sounded small as her mind raced at all the possibilities—most of them not good news.
Her father squirmed in his chair and tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Well, Cassie, I know how worried you’ve been about the financial situation at Fielding Farm, and hell, I’m an old man. I could live wherever as long as there was a roof over my head, but this is your home, your inheritance and I know that it matters to you that it’s been in the family for so long. So I’ve been racking my brain and racking my brain, and then I met Simon.”
He offered the man a quick jerk of a smile, then turned his nervous attention back to Cassie and cleared his throat. “Well, as I said, I’m sure Joanie has told you that our Simon here is a financial wizard.”
Simon didn’t smile at the compliment. If anything, he seemed unhappy about it.
“And we… Simon and I… put our heads together and came up with a plan guaranteed to save the farm.”
“Really?” Cassie scooted forward in her chair, giving both men a quick glance. “What exactly did you have in mind?” Her gaze settled on Simon, who seemed icy calm and the expression on his face, the sudden squaring of his shoulders, made him look like he belonged in a conference room in front of a board of directors, in spite of his jeans and t-shirt.
First he glanced at her father and then turned his lovely green eyes on her. “A deal,” he said.
She could smell that same deep earth and ozone scent beneath the scent of a grassy field. It was the same scent she’d smelled in the cabin, in his bed.
“A deal?”
Her father cleared his throat and tugged at his shirt again.
“What sort of deal?”
As Simon Dennis lea
ned over the table, the farmhand was completely transformed into the CEO. “It’s a pretty simple deal really, Cassie. You marry me and save Fielding Farm.”
The air in the room suddenly felt thick and congealed. The only sound was the ticking of the clock on the wall and the roar of blood in her ears. Both men held her gaze while she made several fish gasps.
It was a damn good thing she was sitting, or she was sure her knees would have given beneath her. But she took her time answering him, not because she was playing the game. Hell, she didn’t even know there was a game until this minute. No, she took her time answering him because she had to wait until she could be sure she could breathe without suffocating, be sure she could speak without her voice trembling.
“Is this an ultimatum?” she managed.
“No. It’s just the best way to protect your interests and save the farm,” he replied.
God the man was smooth. She gulped tea and found her voice again. “Okay, I’m just mercenary enough to do that, but what’s in it for you? This isn’t Chicago. Under the best of circumstances Fielding Farm isn’t worth even one of your lower end business deals. And this isn’t even close to the best of circumstances.”
His jaw tightened until she was afraid he’d break teeth, and his lips thinned to a tight line. The muscles along his neck twitched. “I like it here.”
Before either of them could say anything else, her father cleared his throat with a sound like someone starting a lawn mower then shoved back his chair. “I’m going to let the two of you have space to talk, and then, Cassie, if you need to yell and scream at me, I’ll be down in my workshop.”
She didn’t try to stop him as he left. She knew she could handle her father. He was stubborn, but he was also a reasonable man. In truth, she really was mercenary enough to take Simon up on his offer, but she leaned over the table, once again calm, and said, “It’s pretty obvious what’s in this for me, Simon, but I need to know what’s in it for you? I need to know that you’ve not got ulterior motives. Hell, you don’t even know me.”
“As I said, I like it here. You have what I want, what I’ve always wanted. And,” a blush worked its way up his tanned throat onto his cheeks, “I need a wife.”
She blinked. “You need a wife. Well, I’m sure a man like you can have your pick of nice trophy wives and debutants. Why me?”
“My father’s already got several willing trophy wives and debutants picked out for me, and I don’t want any of them.”
“So you’re marrying me to get your father off your ass.”
“I’m marrying you so I can stay on your farm.” He shrugged and offered her half a smile. “And to get my father off my ass.”
She studied him over the table. “What else do I need to know?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m the oldest and only son. My father wants me to take over the reins of Dennis Consolidated. I could do it, but I hate it, and frankly I’m not the best person for the job. I marry you, become a farmer. Dennis Consolidated gets the best possible CEO to lead them into the future, and dad gets over it. Happy ending.”
“You’re really willing to marry someone you don’t even know to achieve that end?”
“Oh, I’m willing,” he said, offering her a smile that was flat out scary. “Besides. I know you better than you think. Your father adores you, and I’ve been paying enough attention to know that he has good reason.”
She reached for her tea glass and finished it in one long gulp, spilling a good bit of it down the front of her shirt, and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “And will that be a marriage in name only or will it be a real marriage?”
He laughed out loud and his green eyes sparked bright emerald. “After last night, I hardly think the two of us could keep it platonic, Cassie.”
“Just making sure.” The butterflies danced low in her belly, and her nipples offered him a full salute in her slightly damp shirt. “And what about a pre-nup?”
“I don’t need a pre-nup. Hell, you can have whatever you want of mine. I don’t give a damn.”
This time it was her turn to laugh. “I was talking about me. I want a guarantee that if it doesn’t work out, if we’re not compatible, you won’t try to take Fielding Farm away from me.”
The look on his face was something between stunned and hurt, neither of which she really expected. For a long moment he said nothing, then, his gaze darkened, he reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “You have a lawyer draw it up and I’ll sign it. But I promise you, Cassie, I would never take Fielding Farm from you and your father.”
Strangely, she believed him. For a long moment, they sat in the silence of the kitchen, her heart hammering as though it would jump from her chest. He showed no signs of impatience, no signs of stress. He only sat holding her in his dark green gaze.
At last she found her voice. “All right. I’ll marry you. But if we’re gonna do it, we need to do it now and get it over with. I don’t have time for all the hoopla and planning for pulling off some swank wedding during the busy season.”
Simon offered her a quirk of a smile. “Your father told me you were a hopeless romantic.”
*****
The company jet! His fucking company jet flew them to Vegas, where they were met on the tarmac by a black limo and driven to The Wedding Chapel where the preacher and the witnesses and the recorded music were all waiting for them. Clearly, Simon wanted it done as quickly as she did. She even thought it was because he knew that there was way too much work to be done to dally about. After all, this wedding was business, and she wasn’t about to let herself be sidetracked. It was a marriage of convenience for both of them, and even if they did consummate the blessed event on the flight home, which she figured they would, it was still just sex, wasn’t it?
She hadn’t allowed him to buy her a new dress. She was indebted to him enough as it was, but at the last minute, when her father had come down from the attic with her mother’s wedding dress, when his eyes had been bright with pride for his little girl and with memories of the day his beloved had worn that gown, she had to admit, her heart clenched. Her father had said her mother would be proud. She wondered.
Most of Cassie’s wedding day was a blur, but she remembered her father giving her the dress, and she remembered the way Simon had looked at her when she walked down the aisle in the tea-length ivory dress her mother had worn so long ago. She wanted to stop and look behind her, to see who the lucky girl was that Simon was looking at that way. Surely it couldn’t have been her. And she remembered the way he kissed her, as though he were afraid he’d break her, as though she were his dream girl. But then she was under-slept. She could have just been imagining it.
And then he’d gotten a call from Chicago from someone he called Maggie. It was short and cryptic, and he looked very uncomfortable. When he disconnected, he kissed her with little more than a promise, told her he had an emergency to deal with in Chicago, and put her on the company jet back to Missouri, promising her he’d be back as soon as he could. All she knew about the phone call was that whoever this Maggie was, she sounded upset.
“Congratulations on your marriage, idiot,” she said to herself as she put on her seatbelt and settled in for the flight home.
*****
She was barely up the driveway when her dad met her coming up from the barn dressed to work. She could see the look of surprise on his face when Simon was nowhere to be found.
“Emergency call to Chicago,” she said. “Apparently Mr. High Finance isn’t as down on the farm as he’d like to be.” Then, before he could offer her sympathy she didn’t think she could bear right now, she nodded to his work clothes. “Where you going? What’s going on?”
“Tractor broke down. Hal just got it fixed. Field’s only half ploughed. I’m going back. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. It’s gotta be done.”
“No you’re not, Daddy.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Give me five minutes to change, make myself a sandwich and a jug of iced tea an
d I’ll go.” Before he could protest, she kissed him and gave him a hard hug. “Besides, I drive that tractor a whole lot better than you do, Merrill Fielding. You said so yourself.”
The fact that he didn’t argue worried her, but then again her father was intuitive. He may well have understood that right now with her husband deserting her on her wedding night, it was better for her to be busy. He let her go.
*****
It was almost two in the morning when Cassie parked the tractor and dragged herself, filthy and aching, from the dusty hard work to the swimming hole in the woods behind the barn. It was either that or hose off on the lawn, she thought. Joanie would kill her for dragging so much dirt into the house. She’d grabbed a towel and an old pair of sweats from the trunk of her car. On the farm, you never knew when you might need a change of clothes.
She stripped at the car, tossing her dirty clothes onto the floorboard, then walked naked down to the water’s edge, executing a shallow dive off the low dock her father had put in just for that purpose when she had first learned to swim. She propelled herself beneath the surface in powerful strokes for as long as she could, which was quite awhile. When she was a kid she always won the underwater swimming contests with her friends. She had good lungs, her dad always told her, but she knew he was talking more about her ability to cuss loudly and robustly when the tractor broke down or when the cow kicked over the milk bucket.
Not wanting to think, not wanting to admit that marrying Simon Dennis might just have been the stupidest thing ever, especially not wanting to think about the phone call from this Maggie person who exerted enough power over him to send him scurrying off to Chicago on his wedding night, she did a hard crawl stroke all the way to the other side, and was almost back to the dock before she noticed that she wasn’t alone.
Sexy Just Got Rich: Brit Babes Do Billionaires Page 20