by Ali Parker
It was probably a good thing that she hadn’t been there the night before.
But that meant I was doubly excited to see her this morning. I wanted to make sure she knew that. That what? That I wanted her, with every fiber of my being? That I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her?
What exactly was I looking for from this? I had told her that Saturday night wasn’t a date. I had told her that it was just dinner, a way of thanking her for all the work she’d done with Duck. But had it been something more than that? It had definitely felt like that. It had felt as though the whole night was foreplay. It was a relief when we finally ended up in bed together.
I was starting to realize that I really liked her. That was the reason I hated the idea of her leaving. Why I wanted her to keep training Duck, even though I was pretty sure she had learned everything that I could possibly want her to learn. Brea had been far too productive over the couple of weeks she had been here.
Now, I couldn’t imagine not having her there. But that was silly. It wasn’t like I could keep her there forever.
Unless we admitted that we were doing more than just fucking. Unless I convinced her to actually go on a date or two with me.
Were we ready for that? I wasn’t really sure. But I was pretty sure that I wanted to try to figure things out with her. We were going to have to have a conversation about it. I didn’t even know how to start that, but I supposed coffee was as good a start as any.
It was a conversation that I wished we’d had the previous morning, when she’d been over here for breakfast. But I hadn’t realized just how much I hated the idea of losing her until she was gone for the rest of the day. I’d spent all of Sunday thinking about her, and that was how I realized just how deep my feelings for her really ran. Besides, I hadn't wanted to ruin the moment. Yesterday had been so perfect, and waking up next to her was amazing.
I didn’t want her to run again.
Replaying things, I tried to figure out why she was so skittish. I could tell she didn’t do the relationship thing much. That was part of it. And I knew it hadn’t helped things, the way that I had reminded her, that first time that this was just about sex. But she was so skittish, I felt like there must be something else to it.
But maybe she just thought we didn’t have time for this relationship. That could be it.
Just then, a truck pulled into the driveway, interrupting my musings. I squinted out at it, hopeful that it was Brea. But instead, it was just Tanner. I sighed and shook my head.
“Hey, Cuz!” he called, coming up to join me on the porch. “Ooh, coffee. Getting fancy this morning, are we?” he asked, grabbing Brea’s mug before I could stop him. And really, there was no reason to stop him. By the time Brea got here, the coffee would be cold, and the sweetness of the gesture would be lost.
Besides, I didn’t want to give Tanner anything else to give me shit about.
“You’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning,” Tanner said. “Had a good rest of your weekend after the hunting trip?”
“Yeah, it was good,” I said.
“Just good?” Tanner asked, his eyebrows waggling in that way that meant he figured I had gotten up to something. He probably thought we had gone at it the minute he had left Brea and I alone on Saturday.
To be fair, we hadn’t gone at it right away, but it hadn’t taken us too long before we were falling into bed with one another.
I lifted an eyebrow, but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “It was better than good, actually,” I admitted. “Brea and I had dinner together on Saturday night, and then I ended up back at her place.”
“Score!” Tanner said. “That’s pretty classy of you, taking her to dinner first.”
“I didn’t take her to dinner just so I could get laid,” I said, not sure why I felt the need to clear up that misperception. “It was mainly to say thanks for everything she’s done in training Duck. You saw the way Duck got that bird while we were out hunting. And anyway, I wasn’t planning on staying over at her place that night, but we both had a little too much to drink and decided it would be safer than driving. So we walked over to her place.”
“I don’t know, sure sounds like a date to me,” Tanner said, shrugging. His eyes were twinkling with that now-familiar, teasing mirth, and I started to wonder why I had even started this conversation with him. He didn’t need to know any of this.
But I was starting to realize that I actually really liked him. As a friend, not just family. He was hardworking, but he knew how to have fun as well. Hell, he was the closest thing to a friend that I’d had in a long time.
“So now that you’ve broken the dry spell, you’re going to come out to the bar with me more often, right?” Tanner asked. “You’d make a great wingman.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said. “The truth is, I actually think I’m starting to really like Brea, so I don’t really feel like chatting up random girls at the bar.”
Tanner stared at me for a moment, looking absolutely flabbergasted. Then, he shook his head as well. “Man, that’s not good,” he said.
Frowning, I was confused. I thought he liked Brea. But maybe he knew something I didn’t. Maybe he had heard some gossip while he was out at the bar.
“Why not?” I asked slowly, though I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. If it was just gossip, maybe I was better off not hearing it. And if there was truth to it, some real reason that I shouldn’t be with Brea, did I really want to know what it was?
I supposed I did. Better to know now rather than let myself get in over my head more than I already was, only to find some reason I couldn’t be with her. I hated the idea of having to quit this now, though. It was still going to suck, now or later.
“It’s not a good idea to mix work and pleasure,” Tanner said, though. “And remember, she’s still your employee, for as long as she’s working with Duck.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked, rolling my eyes. I’d expected him to have some real reason for it. And that was strange, really. Was I trying to find reasons to not be with Brea? “I’m not the one paying her anyway; my dad was the one who hired her. She’s not really my employee.”
Admittedly, I didn’t have time to date her. I was busy. I didn’t have enough employees around here. But she understood that. She had grown up on a ranch, and she knew what this life entailed. I didn’t think that was enough to ruin things between us.
“If she works here on the farm, she’s your employee,” Tanner said firmly. “And as for the worst that could happen, I don’t know. But if the two of you had it out, maybe she wouldn’t want to work with Duck anymore. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Sighing, I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s like that, man,” I told him. “I don’t think she would do that.” I cracked a smile. “Actually, I think she likes Duck better than she likes me, so if she had to choose, I’m pretty sure Duck would get the nod.”
Tanner laughed. “Well, as long as you don’t mind being second-place to your dog in her affections,” he said. “I guess she must be mostly done with training Duck by this point anyway, huh? That was some pretty effective fetching she did on Saturday.”
“Yeah, it was. Amazing really.” I grinned at him and stood up, taking both the mugs. “Let’s get to work,” I said, even though I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying toward the driveway. Brea still hadn’t shown up, but I didn’t want to ask Tanner’s opinion on that. He would just remind me, again, that it was a bad idea to mix business and pleasure. Like it was my fault that Brea couldn’t show up to places on time.
Tanner and I started working near the barn, fixing up some of the old barrels that we’d used for storage. After years and years of just sitting there in the barn, some of them were in pretty bad shape. Not beyond hope, but they needed a little attention.
“I’m going to bring Duck out with us,” I told Tanner finally, when it became clear I wasn’t going to be able to keep my eyes from straying back toward
the house. Had Brea slipped in while I’d been busy? Maybe she hadn’t come to say hello because she was embarrassed about how late she’d been that morning, or something like that.
“Gave Brea the day off, did you?” Tanner finally asked.
“Yeah, she’s been working so hard,” I said faintly, wishing I could make the lie sound more believable. But thankfully, Tanner didn’t comment on it.
I headed for the house, wiping my hands off before pulling open the door. “Duck!” I called. But Duck didn’t immediately come running. I frowned, sure now that Brea must be here working with him. But I eventually found Duck fast asleep in a patch of sunlight on the living room couch, and Brea was nowhere to be seen.
I pulled out my phone and looked up the number for the training company. Maybe they would know where Brea was. Maybe she just had another last-minute session with someone else. Or maybe not even a last-minute session. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if something had slipped Brea’s mind. She might have forgotten to tell me.
When I called the training center, there was no answer, and I hung up without leaving a message. I just couldn’t fathom why Brea hadn’t shown up. Why she hadn’t even bothered to call. I had thought things were going really well between us.
But then again, I remembered the way she had bolted out of here, after we’d had sex the first time. Maybe this was her way of reminding me that we were just fucking. Saturday night hadn’t been a date. It had just been dinner, followed by sex. Scorching hot sex, maybe, but just sex.
I could feel myself starting to get angry. If that was how she felt, why didn’t she just tell me? Why did she just shut me out and blow off her training time with Duck? That wasn’t fair to me, and it definitely wasn’t fair to Duck. She hadn’t struck me as that kind of person either. She seemed like the kind of person who always spoke her mind. The kind of person who, if something was wrong, confronted the problem head-on.
Had I judged her incorrectly?
And what the hell was wrong with me, anyway? I barely knew her. How could I be this twisted up with feelings for her already? And now, I was even letting her impact my work. I should be out there by the barn, working with Tanner. Instead, he was doing all the work while I fretted over something I had apparently done wrong. Or something I said that made Brea never want to see me again.
It would probably be a good thing if she didn’t want anything else to do with me. This was never supposed to be a relationship to begin with. Saturday might have been fun, and yesterday morning might have seemed pretty much perfect. But we weren’t dating. It was good of her to remind me of that.
She didn’t have to tell me what she was up to at all times anyway. I would have appreciated the heads-up that she wasn’t going to be working with Duck today, if for no other reason than I’d felt stupid waiting on the porch with coffee ready that morning and she’d never showed up. But she didn’t owe me anything. Duck was fine on her own for the day.
Plus, I had way more important things to do than stand here in the living room having a mental debate over her. Tanner was waiting for me. We had things to do.
I shook my head in disgust and headed back out to the barn.
“Thought you were bringing Duck out with you,” Tanner said, when I finally made it back.
“She was sound asleep. Thought it’d be mean to wake her,” I responded, trying to keep my temper in check. Tanner wasn’t the one I was mad at.
If anything, I was mad at myself. I should never have started something like this to begin with. Now, more than ever, I needed to stay focused on the farm. I had to quit thinking about Brea. For a minute, I toyed with the idea of asking Tanner to get drinks with me after work. Maybe the best way to forget about Brea was to turn my attention to someone else. Lack of female attention was probably the only reason I was so hung up on her to begin with.
But I still didn’t relish the idea of chatting up random females, or falling into bed with someone else.
It would be yet another distraction from work, I finally told myself. Better that I just throw myself into work, so I’d be too tired to think about anything else. The farm needed my attention, anyway.
22
Brea
Nina was surprised to see me at the office on Monday morning. To be honest, I’d done a lot of thinking about it. As far as she was concerned, and Luke for that matter, I should be over at the Dawson place working with Duck this morning. Just like I had been for the past couple weeks. Just like I had told Luke I would be.
The previous morning had been so good, I could barely believe that we had gotten to this point. Somehow, I already missed Luke. I wanted to see him. I wanted to hug him, more than anything. But I knew that as soon as I went over to his place, we’d continue whatever this thing was that we had started. And if that wasn’t what I wanted, I needed to figure that out.
I couldn’t keep stringing him along, and that’s what it felt like I had been doing. I’d seen the way he’d looked at me yesterday. This thing wasn’t just about sex anymore, not for either of us. It was something more than that.
Only I couldn’t let things continue, not after everything that Dad had said the previous day. Dad didn’t want me to go anywhere near Luke, and I had to respect that. I thought I did, anyway.
But I couldn’t figure out what to do. I didn’t want to go against Dad’s wishes and go see Luke. What if there really was a real reason he told me to stay away from the other man? What if it wasn’t just that he was being overprotective or that he thought he was going to lose me? I just didn’t know.
On the other hand, I felt like by now, I knew Luke. Well, enough to judge that he wasn’t a threat to me. Or at least, not in that kind of way. The thing I was most worried about now was the fact that I was starting to develop feelings for him. What if Luke just didn’t feel the same way? That would be devastating.
But if that was what Dad was worried about, if he thought I was going to get my heart broken, it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t a reason to stop hanging out with Luke. We had only slept together a couple of times now. Even if my feelings were starting to get tangled up in it, this whole thing was still pretty casual. It would be plenty easy to just nip it in the bud now, without really feeling too upset about it.
Right? Maybe not, though. I couldn’t tell.
Luke confused me, and that was the truth of it. He made me feel these crazy things, feelings I’d never had before. I just didn’t know what to do about them.
I was supposed to head straight over to Luke’s this morning to continue working with Duck, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew if I wasn’t going to show up, I should probably call him to let him know. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid he’d do, convince me to come in after all? I should just tell him that I was sick. But then I’d have to tell him when I’d be coming back.
No. Better to just say nothing at all. It wasn’t like leaving Duck with him would change his schedule or anything. He could look after the pup for a day, and then I could figure out what I really wanted to do.
I knew that the minute I heard his voice, I’d melt and be right back over there.
“What are you doing here?” Nina asked.
“It was a long weekend,” I told her, sighing as I flopped down on one of the couches in the back room.
“I’ve got a dog coming in to train, so you can join me in the training room,” Nina told me.
“Sure,” I said.
“So what happened?” Nina asked. “Did you mess things up with the Dawson boy?” She glanced over at me out of the corner of her eye, and I could tell that she was trying to sound casual about it, like this didn’t matter either way. But I knew exactly what she was thinking.
Nina had wanted me to settle down for a while now. She just wanted me to be happy, in a sort of motherly way. She wanted me to find a guy who made me happy, and she wanted me to fall in love. And the trouble was, it seemed like every time I so much as mentioned a guy, she was five steps ahead of me in
her mind. She had probably planned the wedding already.
It amused me, normally. But with Luke, I was actually starting to wonder if he might be the right kind of guy for me. So her automatic acceptance that he was the right one gave me pause.
Had I messed things up with Luke? I didn’t know, to be honest. I hadn’t messed things up the previous day, but I might have done so now, by not showing up. He had to know that it was related to Saturday night.
And if that wasn’t enough to mess things up between us, there was the small matter of my feelings for him. If he found out about those, what would he think?
“Not exactly,” I told her, shaking my head. “It’s more complicated than that.” I made a face. “Ugh, I hate the way that sounds.”
“What is it that’s so complicated?”
“I went hunting with him, and one of the guys who works over there,” I explained. “And with Duck”
“How did Duck do?” Nina asked, glancing at me as she led her current client through a series of jumps and things.
“She actually did surprisingly well,” I said. “She didn’t retrieve the first duck, which was kind of a bummer. But she ran straight for the second one and had it back in no time. Laid it right at Luke’s feet and everything.” I shook my head, feeling that flush of pride go through me again. “She’s a really smart dog.”
“With a great trainer,” Nina said, smiling over at me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“So what, Luke thinks you’re finished training Duck now?” Nina surmised.
“I think he thought that I might think that, and he seemed pretty upset about it,” I mused.
“Because he wants to keep seeing you.” Nina grinned, but then she frowned. “But if he wants to keep seeing you, what are you doing here? You didn’t think I was going to keep you from going there, did you? Because I was planning on you continuing training for at least this week. It’s all been paid for already.”