“Just do.” Planting his hands into the earth, he grunted in pain as he pushed up slowly, standing like an old man and not a young farmer. He wobbled a little, shaking his head and blinking.
I unfolded my legs and met him on two feet. “You should be happy I’m going.”
“I am.” He brushed past me, swiping the backpack from the grass as he did. “See ya round.”
His march had a slight limp, his hips not as limber, his back not as supple. He was hurting, and I’d just somehow made it worse.
All selfish reasons for wanting to leave vanished, and once again, I had the undeniable desire to help.
Pulling the towel around my breasts, I knotted it in place, then jogged after him. “Wait.”
“Nothing to wait for.”
“What I was going to say before—”
“Isn’t important.”
“Just, stop, will you?” I slammed to my heels. “Does your mom know you’re still injured?”
He stopped, turning around like a hunter. “Why? What does it matter to you?”
“Does she or not? Just answer the question.”
He crossed his arms, his full height making me tip my chin to meet his eyes. “No. Unless you’ve told her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good, then she doesn’t know.”
“But you have an entire farm to run while you’re hurt. Otherwise, she’s gonna find out.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I’ll figure it out.”
Daring to step closer, I breathed, “I’ve figured it out.”
His eyebrows rose. “You have, have you? What did you figure?”
“I’ll help you.”
His face went blank, then a vicious chuckle fell from his lips. “You? You want to help me?”
“Very much.”
“You think you can drive the tractor, raker, baler, hoist hay onto trailers, stack it in sheds, run new fence lines, fertilize—”
“I can do whatever you can do.” My spine straightened. “I can’t explain it. I know you think I don’t belong here but something about the land says I do. I want to get dirty. I want to work hard. I want you to show me.”
He leaned closer, anger building. “I’m not playing babysitter, not when I already need help with my back screwed.”
“Exactly. Show me and I’ll help you. I’ll do it all.”
He laughed coldly. “You’d last five minutes.”
“You said that before, yet you don’t know that.” I stepped into his personal space. The smell of sun-warmed skin, leather, and pine sap filled my nose. “Give me a go.”
He rocked back, trying to put space between us but unwilling to concede defeat by backing away. “No way.”
“Give me a chance to learn.”
“Nope.”
“I can help you.”
“You’d be a hindrance.” His lips curled, baring his teeth. “A hindrance who I thought was leaving.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t look all that happy about me leaving a second ago.”
He laughed once. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Hope. I was happy. Believe me.”
“Okay then…how about a deal?”
“Another one?” He rolled his eyes. “What’s with you and deals?”
“You never let me announce the last one. And besides, they’re a bargaining chip. Makes dealing with you easier.”
His jaw clenched. “You’re not exactly Miss Easy-to-get-along-with either, you know.”
“Only because you bring out the worst in me.”
He swallowed a growl. “Fine, what’s your deal?”
“Show me.” I sniffed. “Let me work for you, and if I can’t cope with the workload or I’m not doing it to a standard you expect, then fire me.”
“Fire you? I’m not going to pay you, so why would I fire you? You’re not my employee.”
“You’re right. I’m not. I’m your friend.”
“There’s that nasty word again.”
I wanted to stamp my foot in frustration. “Fine. Ask me to leave.”
His face blackened. “Okay then, leave.”
“I didn’t mean right now.”
He threw his hands up. “I can’t win with you. You tell me to do something, yet when I do, you ignore me anyway.”
“I meant I’ll leave if you ask me to go after you’ve seen if I’m a help or a hindrance.”
“God, you’re complicated.” He rubbed his mouth with a dirty hand. “Why does everything have to be so damn difficult with you?”
“This is simple, Jacob. Exceedingly simple. You need someone to help you with the fields. You need to keep your injury a secret. If you let me work with you, Della will think you’re being nice and showing me what I’ve wanted to do since I arrived on your stupid farm, and you get a free labourer who knows how to hold her tongue.”
He went to interrupt, but I held up my finger. “And if it’s not working and you genuinely think I’m failing as a farmhand, then ask me to leave, and I’ll leave. No arguments. No bargaining. Just a packed suitcase and a flight back to Scotland.”
Silence sounded as loud as my thrumming heartbeat as he studied me.
His breath was torn, his hands fisted, yet another fight that I’d promised wouldn’t happen lashed around us like lightning.
Finally, he asked in a harsh voice, “You swear on your mother’s soul that you’ll leave if I’ve had enough?”
I hid my flinch and nodded. “I swear.”
“You’ll go if I say I can’t do this anymore?”
“I promise.”
“And you’ll do everything I say without question?”
I nodded again, tasting victory. “Definitely.”
He looked over my head at the horizon beyond. At the overgrown grass, afternoon sunshine, and horses painting a perfect postcard of his empire. His eyes darted left and right, assessing workload, cataloguing timeframes and requirements.
And slowly, he nodded.
He accepted.
He agreed.
“One week, then we’ll reassess.” His dark gaze landed on mine.
“I can live with that.”
“Good.”
I should’ve just smiled.
I should’ve walked away with a smug sway of my hips and hid my victory grin. But my mind was still full of his parents’ love story. The inner depth of The Boy & His Ribbon and the many phrases that became so heavy with meaning and affection.
And I couldn’t help myself.
Sweeping up on tiptoes, I pressed my lips to his stubble-covered cheek.
I kissed him.
I claimed him.
And all I whispered was, “Fine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jacob
* * * * * *
WARM WATER CASCADED over me.
The shower was supposed to wash away the dirt of camping, the pain of falling, and the god-awful sensation of Hope’s lips on my cheek.
It wasn’t working.
I’d shaved my stubble. I’d soaped my face. I’d done all I could to remove any trace of her kiss, yet my skin burned as if she’d poisoned me.
And what the hell was she doing saying ‘fine’ in that breathy, intoxicating whisper? Did she know what that word meant to my family? Did she say it deliberately?
Of course she did.
Her dad had played mine.
She’d witnessed the lines, she’d read the script. She’d probably laughed with her father over the silly habits and sacred phrases of my parents.
Goddammit.
My fist drove into the tiles, hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to break. Hope didn’t deserve that sort of power over me. I wouldn’t bow to her mind games. I wouldn’t succumb to whatever plan she thought she’d set in motion by working with me.
But that kiss…
Fucking hell.
No matter what road my thoughts chased, they always ended at the same dead-end of her lips on my cheek and her scent of lilies, sunshine, and lemona
de in my nose.
I should never have left the forest. I should never have believed I was safe enough in her company to let down my guard. And I should never have permitted my body to react. To stand, two hours later, under a stream of scalding water, doing my best to get my need under control.
The viciously hungry greed for another kiss, another touch, another something to grant peace from the snarling, clawing desire in my belly.
My hand brushed the hardness between my legs, my blood begging for a release all while the thought sickened me. Because the reality was, I didn’t just want a release.
I wanted Hope to be the one to deliver it.
And that was the most petrifying admission I’d ever had. I wanted her to touch me. I wanted her to kiss me.
I wanted her to stay as far away from me as possible.
She was dangerous.
She was gorgeous and annoying and brave and sexy and driving me out of my goddamn mind.
How the hell had this happened?
Which argument switched my anger into want?
And how the hell did I stop it?
* * * * *
“You’re late.”
I narrowed my gaze through the dark gloom of sunrise. I’d slept like the dead last night after succumbing to my disgusting needs of jerking off in the shower.
I’d done my best to keep my mind blank and sterile as I pumped ruthlessly and clinically to an orgasm. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about salvation. And I hated, hated that images of Hope had managed to crawl into my mind, and I now had fantasies of her on her knees before me, her lips wet, her body naked, her hands around my—
“It’s dawn. You’re just an overachiever,” I muttered, moving stiffly toward the light switch in the barn where the tractor and attachments lived. I’d also slept well thanks to four painkillers, a slug of whiskey, and the fact I hadn’t been at all comfortable in the forest for the past three nights. “What are you even doing up yet, anyway?”
“Your mom told me five a.m. is your typical start.”
“Just like she told you where to find me, I’m guessing?”
Hope smiled with perfect teeth and her damn perfect face. “Yep.”
“Wonderful.” My sarcasm was as dark as the dawn.
Pressing the switch, a wash of warm electrical light chased away shadows and spiders, granting false day to the otherwise still fast asleep farm.
Hope sat bold and unwanted in my tractor. Her hair twisted into a ponytail, the long, glossy brown sticking through the back of a beige baseball cap I vaguely recalled was my mother’s. She wore a white singlet with a pink bra peeking by the straps, jeans far too clean for field work, and one of my old shirts with a torn elbow and tatty collar the same colour as golden hay.
“What are you doing wearing my stuff?” I moved around, staying busy so I didn’t look at her and remember what I did last night.
“Your mom lent it to me.” Hope plucked the cuff, pushing it up her skinny forearm. “I think it suits me.”
“It looks ridiculous.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She beamed, leaping down from the old cab and standing by a rugged tractor wheel far bigger than she was. “How are you this morning?” Without waiting for my reply, she launched into another conversation that reminded me of the morning starlings outside my bedroom. “I’m so happy you agreed to let me help you, Jacob. I’m so excited; I can’t tell you how excited I am. I mean, I can tell you. Obviously, I speak, and you listen, but I don’t think you truly get what this means to me.” Her eyes glittered with joy that tried to infect me but was just as insidious as a disease.
Spinning around, she pranced toward the old shelving where tins held old nails, new screws, odds and ends, and rusty tools wanting to play their part but semi-retired in their decrepit age. “I want to know how everything works. I want to know what seeds to plant and how you keep weeds out and about irrigation and what you do in case of a bug infestation.”
She clutched a pipe bender to her chest, skipping back toward me as if it was a Golden Globe or whatever award she could win in her Hollywood world. “What does this do? Is it hard to use? Should you teach me now or is it not important?”
I rolled my eyes, forcing a yawn and layering boredom thick. “Unless you’re planning on becoming a plumber, you don’t need to know what a pipe bender does.”
“Ah, okay.” She grinned, placing it back amongst the relics. The same relics Dad had claimed from the farmer who’d hurt him. The police had appeared one day with a box of stuff and said it was his if he wanted it. They’d kept the brand, though. The cattle mark that had been seared into all the children Mclary had bought.
“…so yeah. That’s what I think.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to whatever Hope prattled about. Continuing to ignore her, I climbed onto the tread of the tractor to check the fuel gauge.
Half full.
Better take a gas can with us to top up rather than returning to the barn. We stockpiled diesel at low prices, filling up large tanks buried underground.
It wouldn’t take long to fill a canister or two.
Twisting to leap off the tractor, I miscalculated the jump. My back tweaked, my head sloshed, and I fell forward, completely missing my footing.
I braced myself for a hard, painful landing.
Only, something soft and delicate intercepted, wedging her shoulder against my chest, taking my entire weight for a second before she toppled to the ground with me on one knee and a hand speared to the concrete beside her.
My palm slapped by her face for balance, my body poised over hers while she landed on her back with hay in her ponytail and dirt smudging her cheek.
I stopped breathing as my body once again reacted.
Reacted way too fast and utterly out of my control.
She sucked in a breath as I shifted, pain lashing down my spine and my fingers tangling in her hair on the floor.
Her eyes lost its infectious lime joy, turning forest green with sick invitation. She shifted a little, her legs falling apart in a way that made me think she didn’t know she’d done it. Her desire hijacked her control, just like an erection had hijacked mine.
Our bodies understood whatever was going on between us.
The basicness of sex seemed so utterly simple.
My hips screamed to come down and slot between hers. My back didn’t give a damn if such a position would kill. All I needed was her flush against me so I had something to hold and press against and goddammit—
Breathing hard, I scrambled upright, doing my best to hide the tightness of my jeans. “You okay?”
Hope sucked in a breath, her legs scissoring together as if she’d only just realised what she’d done. “Yeah, you didn’t hurt me.” On the floor with her baseball cap askew, lips plump from no kiss and eyes wild from no touch, she didn’t look seventeen.
She looked a damn sight older and scarily younger all at the same time.
My chest physically hurt as my heart played some awful version of Jenga with my ribcage, tugging on each bone, trying to see which rib would cause the rest to come crashing down so it would be free to go to her.
“That’s good.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “You should’ve just let me fall.” My voice sounded thick and strange to my ears, gravelly with self-denial and frustration.
Climbing easily to her feet, she brushed off cobwebs and barn muck. “It was instinctual to help. Sorry.” She smiled softly. “To be honest, I’m more worried about your concussion than your back. Your balance seems off.”
I turned away, striding as smoothly as I could to the stack of red diesel canisters in the shadows. “I’m fine.”
“I know.” She followed me, grabbing a can without me asking. “Just making observations.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Okay, Jacob.” She looked me up and down, her gaze lingering on places I wished it wouldn’t. “I won’t.” Tossing the canister into the tractor’s small storage box, she cl
apped her hands together, uncaring about the dust, and grinned. “The sun is waking up. Let’s go meet her on the fields.”
* * * * *
I would never admit this out loud.
Even under pain of death.
Never.
I’d take this secret to my grave.
But Hope…I’d completely misjudged her.
She might’ve been born to stardom; she might’ve been raised by nannies, taught by scholars, and lived in mansions, but she’d merely tolerated such an existence.
The Hope who had a sunburned nose, three chipped nails, and a grubby white singlet revealing way too much pink bra was not the girl who’d arrived here, lonely and confused, seeking meaning to her life a couple of weeks ago.
She was right.
Plain and simple.
She did belong to the land, and the land belonged to her. I’d never seen something so…right…or so strange. In five hours, Hope had lost her tentative seeking and fully embraced her place in this world.
Her path had forked. Her future amended. And it was all because of the very same thing that had healed and hurt me. Confused and consoled me. Trapped and tempted me.
Land.
“Like this?” she asked, the sun doing its best to turn brown hair blonde with its overly hot rays. She kept shoving the long strands off her shoulder as she bent over the back of the tractor where we needed to change the mower for the raker attachment.
“Nah, the lynchpin first, then the coupling.”
“Ah.” She nodded as if she understood. What made it doubly annoying was she did understand. Everything I told her cemented itself into her brain as if she already knew this stuff.
With a quick tug on the well-greased pin, she unlocked the mowing blades and looked up to where I sat in the tractor. Giving me a thumbs up, she grinned into the brightness. “All good.”
Trusting her, even though instinct commanded I slip to the ground and check, I lowered the large contraption until it fell the rest of the way to the grass. It clunked as the coupling came loose, ready to be removed.
Normally, I’d head down and do what was needed, but with my back being so tetchy…well, Hope had proven her worth.
I couldn’t have done this without her. As the day wore on and the sun burned hotter, my headache grew more intense, making my balance unreliable.
The Son & His Hope Page 25