She was not her mother, slipping vodka into her water bottle and screaming at her third husband in the middle of a New York production. She was not her mother, bringing her young daughters to rehearsal to be raised by Darya, the wardrobe department supervisor who spoke very little English but always had candy in her pockets.
“I know it might seem harsh—”
“I said I get it, Dominic. It won’t happen again.”
“Rachel, it’s okay. In fact, I think you probably already know this production inside and out. Didn’t you say you did Antony and Cleopatra in college? It probably wouldn’t kill you to take the rest of the week off.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I’m fine.” Or she would be, once she got Molly safely out of Eric’s brutal hands.
“I think it might be good for you.”
She suddenly remembered why it had never worked out between the two of them. “Dominic?”
“Yes?”
He had a tendency to treat her like some wilting violet. “If you ever ask me to take time off again, I’ll kick you in the groin too.”
His mouth froze halfway between a laugh and a horrified grimace.
A third voice joined the discussion. “In my experience, the only women who dare to manhandle the family jewels as much as you are the ones who’ve never had a really good titty twister. Have you ever had one of those, Rachel?”
Her arms went automatically over her chest, but she was much too acquainted with Michael’s untimely arrivals to feel anything other than mild surprise at him standing there, waiting for a chance to insert one of his ridiculous commentaries on Life as a Caveman. Dominic took one look at the pair of them squaring off and ducked into the background.
That was another reason they’d never lasted. He was kind of a wimp.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Well, seeing as how my friend can’t even sit down right now, I’m making it my business. Did it ever occur to you that violence is not the answer?”
“Tell that to your friend.”
A dark look crossed Michael’s face, all the more meaningful since it was the first time she’d ever seen him anything but sublimely free of intellect or concern. “You’re wrong about him.”
“And you? Am I wrong about you too?” She didn’t want to think about Eric Peterson and his fists of fury. She didn’t want to think at all.
“No. What you see is what you get.” Michael said. His flippancy was back on in an instant, but Rachel thought the flicker of darker emotion was rather like walking in on your parents having sex. Once witnessed, it could never be taken away. It was imprinted on her memory in a way that was both unsettling and permanent.
“So if I close my eyes, you’ll disappear?”
“No. If you close your eyes, I’m going to sneak up and give you that titty twister.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. Her life was falling to pieces around her and she’d failed at the one thing that was more important than anything else in the world—taking care of Molly. And this man was the enemy, a friend of Eric’s, here seemingly to make her life as difficult as possible.
“I dare you to try,” she finally said, wiping away a few tears.
“I’ll add it to my bucket list,” Michael said with a grin. He looked supremely satisfied with himself. “Now. Can we talk about that fiasco in the other room?”
“No.” All the laughter was snatched away. “You’re lucky I don’t press charges on your friend.”
“For what? Letting his kids play video games?”
“Don’t give me that crap. There’s a lot more to that man than meets the eye. I know about his brother. I know about his past.”
It was a lie, and Rachel wasn’t quite sure how it slipped out, but someone had to be the voice of reason around here. Someone had to step up and play the responsible adult. As always, it fell to her. Rachel, the default adult, who never wore party dresses or even looked at a cocktail. Rachel, who wore sensible shoes and sucked all the joy out of life.
The dark look clouded back into place over Michael’s expression, and this time it was concentrated in the twist of his mouth, which turned down at the corners. Rachel almost missed the flash of his teeth.
“I’ll warn you one time, and one time only. Peterson is one of the best men I know. He’s a good friend, a better dad and loyal as hell to the people who matter to him. Now, as far as I can tell, your sister matters to him. A lot. So before you start sticking your nose in his business, you should ask yourself if you’re willing to accept the consequences.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise. Don’t stir up trouble there, Rachel. He has two little girls at home who depend on him. Leave the past where it is.”
She was shaking. It came as a surprise to look down at her hands and see the way they wobbled, as though she hadn’t had anything to eat in days or was hopped up on eight cups of black coffee. If Michael thought he was reassuring her, he was wrong. The fact that Eric had two little girls at home only increased her sense of urgency in finding out what was wrong. Children deserved better. Molly deserved better.
“Now. I heard Dominic give you the rest of the day off. What do you say we get the hell out of Dodge?”
Her head spun. Hadn’t this man just been handing her a lecture? Didn’t he know she hated the very sight of him? “What are you talking about?”
“You. Me. The open air.” He tucked his hands into his armpits and shrugged. “The alternative is to go talk to your sister. I’m pretty sure she wants to murder you.”
Rachel was not a procrastinator. She and Molly needed to take the time to talk about this—really talk about this. Eric. Her abusive ex, Justin. Baby Hewitt, whom none of them dared call by the name lovingly picked out while all was safe and cozy inside Molly’s womb. But the thought of walking in there and facing her sister’s hysterics right now was too much, even for Rachel’s nerves of iron.
“Where would you take me?” She had a hard time imagining a cozy lunch with linens, crystal and Michael. Then again, a sedate meal for two was hardly something she wanted to share with this man.
“Oho! I’m going to rock your world, woman.” He rubbed his hands together and winked. “You have no idea how hard.”
Rachel stood at the base of the swather, her long red hair whipping in the wind like a heroine in one of those dramatic movies women were always going on and on about. Except instead of letting it look all fiery and exotic, she kept spitting out the strands and glaring at Michael.
“I am not getting inside a tractor, and that’s final.”
“I already told you. It’s not a tractor. It’s a swather,” Michael said. Technically, Rachel was right. It was a tractor with the swather they used for cutting attached to the three-point hitch, but it was far too much fun making her stamp her feet in the dirt to point out the technicalities. “And you’ll like it. It’s neat.”
They stood on the eastern slope of the largest field on the lentil farm, rows of pillowy, upturned soil being prepared for the spring planting in every direction. Even after sixteen years out here, it was a sight that filled Michael with equal parts pride and astonishment. Every year, he helped Jennings with the harvest, but he was usually touring the Highland Games or working construction jobs down in Arizona the rest of the year.
It had been a while since he’d stuck around for the whole cycle of fertilizing and watering and weeding and something called a wilt complex that made Michael want to weep for the poor half-mast lentils. As a kid, it had been a huge part of his life to work the land under Jennings’s coarse but careful instructions. As an adult, the farm was more of a source of amusement than anything else.
“Yeah. I own a lentil farm in Eastern Washington,” was one of his favorite sayings on a first date. It always got a laugh and typically led to more interesting conversations about tumbles in the hay or the size of a workhorse’s package. But actually spend time out here? Give a damn about the harvest? Help Jen
nings with more than just the occasional muscle?
It had been a long time. Too long.
Michael gnawed a long piece of grass thoughtfully. Rachel saw it and grimaced, so he loosened his stance and hooked a thumb on his belt. He needed to turn on full Michael Mode, balls to the wall and tits deep. He’d promised Peterson to keep her distracted and direct all of her antagonistic energies his way—at least until they cleared up the issue of the black eye. He understood Rachel’s concern, but Peterson would no more hit a woman than he would slice off his own dick.
“You promised me fun. Tractors—I’m sorry, swathers—are not fun.” She was pouting now. It was kind of cute.
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then in you go.” Michael grabbed her around the waist before she could protest, hoisting her up and placing her on the top step. As she straightened, he made sure to grab her ankles and hold them down. Her feet were eye level, and he didn’t doubt her desire to plant one of those sharp toes in his face. “It’s not so bad. If you look inside the box under the seat, you’ll probably find some weed. There might be chocolate bars too.”
She paused. “Are you trying to lure me into your unmarked vehicle with promises of drugs and candy?”
“C’mon. I’ll even let you drive.”
As she sighed and rolled her eyes, finally giving in, Michael gave the air a little fist pump, making sure she was able to see his triumph. It worked. She let out an irritated grunt and refused to budge, giving him a perfect reason to wrap his arms around her and load her into the seat.
It might not have been a hug, but it was probably as close as he was going to get. And damn, she felt good. There was a whole lot of woman lurking just underneath her high-necked blouse and slacks. Full breasts and small waist and hips that, forgive him, didn’t lie—they were all there, and Michael wasn’t above adopting underhanded measures to explore the details.
“How subtle. Are you finished manhandling me now?”
Michael lifted his hands in mock surrender as he ducked behind her into the tractor’s cab, which was entirely glassed off and pretty damn lush, if you asked him. “You can’t blame a guy for trying. Will it make you feel better if I let you do the same?”
God help him, she paused and bit her lip, as if considering. His cock shifted as he took in the exact size and scope of the cab. Yes. It would fit two people quite comfortably, especially if there was some straddling and creative body angles coming into play.
But alas. She shook her head and, instead of running her hands over him, gently caressed the black leather seat and large knobby controls. “So you really know how to run this thing?”
“Sure.” He indicated for her to have a seat and was just able to shove himself into a semi-erect position in the space behind her. That wasn’t all of him that was semi-erect.
Small space. Gorgeous woman. It happened.
“Do you know how to drive a clutch?”
“Of course.” She seemed insulted. Good. “Is this where you tell me how much better at driving men are than women?”
“Well, now. That depends on how well you take control of the shaft.”
He felt the slight shake of her laughter. She didn’t release it into the air, of course, but he knew it was there all the same. Somehow, that made it better.
“Push in the clutch right there and then the brake there.” He pointed at her legs and then leaned over her to turn the key to the ignition. The tractor roared to life beneath them, the normally heavy rumble of a more than a hundred horsepower engine only a hum and rattle with the door to the cab closed and sealed.
“And that’s it?”
“Mostly. It’s a lot like driving. Just add the throttle…but not too much.”
She added too much, of course, and they lurched forward with enough force that Michael almost toppled into her lap. Slamming the breaks with considerable force, however, sent him the opposite direction.
“That was…good,” he offered.
“Oh, don’t coddle me. I just need a second to get used to it.” He caught a peek at her face, which was screwed up in concentration, the tip of her tongue just poking out from between her slightly glossed lips.
They moved forward again, still jerky but much better than before. He was almost afraid to offer her any more direction, so intently did she look back and forth between the steering column and the expanse of plowed field in front of them. As much as he appreciated the sight of a woman mastering a large piece of machinery on her own, he didn’t relish the idea of toppling Jennings’s most prized possession into a ditch.
They had a good relationship, he and Jennings, built on a mutual desire to keep out of each other’s shit as much as possible, but the man loved this farm like it was his own child.
He kept his comments to a minimum, but even then, she didn’t hear very many of them. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was having too much fun to notice his occasional remark on hitting the throttle harder or faster or like she was making sweet, passionate love to it.
“Hey, nice turn,” Michael said as she veered sharply and let the wheel spin loosely through her hands. “You’re kind of a natural at this.”
“Of course I am. But am I killing all your crops?” Despite her apparent concern, she sped up, leaning forward in her seat.
“Nah. We don’t plant for a few more weeks. And as long as you stay to the right of the field, you should be fine. You know, when I was a teenager, we used to have tractor races. I was kind of the local celebrity, actually.”
For the first time, she turned, something like actual joy sparking in her eye. She allowed the tractor to come to a stop. “Tractor races?”
“Yeah. Not on these ones, obviously. Jennings would’ve cut off my legs before he’d let me drive any of the good stuff. But the smaller ones, sure.”
“And do these tractors still exist?”
Michael grinned. This woman had a hell of a lot of faults, but lack of spirit wasn’t one of them. “Why, Ms. Hewitt. Are you challenging me to a duel?”
She jumped to her feet, smacking her head on the roof in the process. It didn’t faze her. With one hand pressed to the top of her hair, her lips spread, so slow it was hard to tell it was a smile.
But it was good, that smile. It had meaning. It had promise. And it made him feel like he was accomplishing something worthwhile—something that had nothing to do with Peterson or Molly or the stage.
“You’re on, Mr. O’Leary,” Rachel said, that smile still in place. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me yet. But one thing you should jot down—I never, ever lose.”
Rachel had her shoes kicked off and her linen slacks rolled up to the knee. Mud splattered over every inch of her calves and even spread up her sides so that her cream-colored blouse looked more like leopard skin than a solid color.
But if she looked bad, Michael was five times worse. He had mud reaching up to his knees, and his shirt was damp enough that she could make out each line that chiseled along his back, his muscles moving and dancing to a beat she could almost hear inside her head.
The racing tractors they steered around the mud pit were tiny compared to the giant piece of farming equipment she’d driven earlier—these were more like riding lawn mowers than anything else. Hers was a rusted red with a white stripe along the side. Michael’s was predictably green and sported a leaping yellow deer.
They’d lost track of how many laps they were on about half an hour ago, and were now going head-to-head, trying to force each other off the main stretch of mud and into the stubby weeds on either side. Her hair whipped around in a tangled mess, and she was pretty sure this was how people lost their legs.
But she was having fun.
She swerved into Michael’s tractor, nudging him away to cross the finish line just as that thought really hit her. Fun. That’s what this was.
Rachel turned the tractor off and hopped down, her toes squishing into the mud. It was oddly w
arm and probably ruining every pedicure she’d had over the past five years.
“Winner makes lunch. I mentioned that before, right?”
She turned to find Michael smiling at her and immediately broke out into a laugh. He had one muddy handprint on each of his pecs, one more placed very obviously and robustly over the crotch of his khaki shorts.
“I have never met a man so blatantly nonchalant about his…assets,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “And no, the lunch caveat is new. But since I kicked your ass so royally—”
A huge glob of mud, wet and grainy and no longer warm, landed right in the middle of her cheek. She wiped it away, leaving a few diagonal tracks along her cheekbone and toward her brow. Warpaint 101. She hadn’t minored in costume makeup for nothing.
“You did not just do that,” she said.
Another glob hit the opposite side. The man had impeccable aim. Instead of wiping this one off, she reached down and picked up a mud ball of her own. But she should have known better than to go up against an athlete, because his reflexes were about three times faster and a heck of a lot more accurate than hers. Before she even stood up with the ball in her hand, she felt the shock of solid muscle against her midsection.
She shot backward like one of those tackling thingies football players used. But it didn’t hurt, and she let out a squeal, feeling like a lion cub must when it was hard at play. The teeth were out, the paws were batting, but there was gentleness to the impact that did much more to rob her of breath than the hit itself.
“I let you win,” Michael said, his voice very near her ear. He had her lifted entirely off the ground, and for one electric moment, she was weightless—she was flying.
They landed with a weighty squelch. Michael settled on top of her, bracing himself on his arms to prevent the air from being crushed out of her lungs.
Still, she couldn’t breathe, and her head felt light and hazy.
It should have made her furious, being manhandled, pushed to the mud, the loamy smell of the earth filling her hair and her nostrils. But as Michael reached one hand up to wipe away a strand of hair that had stuck to her cheek, she only felt as though she could remain trapped in this moment forever, if only she knew how to hold on.
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