“I had to watch Noah hoe his garden for like three hours today.” Lincoln led the way to the milking shed, which was little more than a one-room shack with a stool, a bucket and a stand Noah had fashioned out of a few extra planks of wood. “I need this.”
Kendra spoke only loud enough for Noah to hear. “Next time I volunteer to watch Noah work his garden.”
Noah coughed heavily and muttered something about the prevalence of goats in the novels of Anne Brontë. Lincoln looked at him as though he was crazy, but Kendra just twisted her hair into a knot at the base of her neck and shot him a wide-eyed stare.
“What?” she asked archly. “I bet there’s nothing you can’t do with a willing hoe in your hands.”
He gave her that one. If the way she reared back at the entrance of the milking shed was any indication, she was about to earn it.
“Okay.” She swallowed as she took in the planked walls, undecorated save for a few nails he used to organize supplies. Even he had to admit it was pretty grim. “You go get the creature and lead her in. I’m going to need a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” Noah asked, slightly scared. Short of turning and making a break for it, there wasn’t much he could see her doing to prepare. “You’re milking a goat, not running a marathon.”
“I’m going to sanitize.”
“Sanitize what?”
Lincoln’s face stretched into a wide, almost sinister grin. “Didn’t you know, Noah? Kendra is a major germaphobe. She won’t even drink from a coffee cup in a restaurant without wiping it down first.”
“I am not a germaphobe.” Kendra swiveled to glare at Lincoln. “I have a healthy respect for organisms that want to turn me into a host, that’s all. My parents wouldn’t let us watch anything but PBS growing up. I’ll have you know they aired a very disproportionate amount of outbreak documentaries in the late eighties.”
Noah shook with laughter. A vegetarian, a germaphobe, a goat-hating wisp of a woman in the tiniest skirt known to mankind. No less ideal partner for him existed anywhere on earth.
Too bad his body begged to differ. Watching her steel her face into a mask of resolve and grit her teeth as she wiped down the milking stand, he realized there wasn’t much she’d back down from. Including him. He was sharing a part of his life not many people got to see, and she was accepting it with open, albeit horrified, eyes.
His blood roared its approval.
The rest of him backed wisely away.
“Goat,” he muttered, and slipped out to the yard to gather the animal.
Kendra watched the creature being led to the milking stand as though she were the one about to put her neck between the braces of wood and be manhandled. To be honest, that seemed the preferable alternative right now.
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, infusing everything with a blurry enchantment. Maybe the goat wasn’t so bad. She seemed docile enough, hairy mouth chewing at nothing, watery eyes seeing even less.
Nope. Her eyes flicked back open and she took a giant step back. She’d need to be blindfolded and drugged before this situation held any appeal.
“God, Kendra,” Lincoln muttered. “It’s okay to let go a little. Is it going to kill you to loosen up for once in your life?”
Naturally, Lincoln’s scorn only wound her up even more. Let go, Kendra. Loosen up, Kendra. It doesn’t have to be perfect, Kendra. Too bad the kinds of people who made those commands were the same ones who reaped all the benefits of her hard work. She was like the Little Red Hen. No one wanted to help bake her bread, but, boy, did they love eating it.
“I fail to see how I became the comic relief in all this.” Steeling her jaw, Kendra dropped to the stool and pressed her face against the animal’s wiry hide. So far it wasn’t terrible. Goat smelled like sweet grass and mangy fur, but that was all. She’d fared worse with blind dates. “Why couldn’t you go roll around in painkillers like any normal invalid?”
“I don’t like feeling hazy,” Lincoln replied. “I can’t be comfortable if I don’t know what’s going on around me.”
Her reaction—irritation—was hidden by the shuffle of Goat as she shifted into place. Of course. Now was when Lincoln wanted to be aware of his surroundings. Not on the job when he dealt with criminals and speeding housewives. Not in a bar where men with knives threatened him. Oh, no. He reserved his common sense for a hermit farm out in the middle of nowhere where no real danger lurked.
Goat kicked. Kendra screamed. And then she promptly changed her mind about the dangers surrounding her. We’re all going to die out here.
“Relax.” Noah’s hand came crushing down on her shoulder as she made a move to bolt. “She can sense your tension.”
“That’s because I am tense,” she said, her teeth clenched.
Unlike Lincoln, who wound her up with his criticisms, Noah simply stood and waited for her heart to resume a normal pattern before speaking. He squeezed her shoulder, his strength a palpable, heady thing capable of commanding her body to do things against its will. “She’s not a very complicated animal. If you want her to feel comfortable with you, all you have to do is be comfortable with her.”
“I can’t just will myself to relax. That’s not how it works.” That was what massages and aromatherapy and vodka were for.
“Try it anyway. For me.” His voice crooned low and soothing, and even though she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that Lincoln was still there, she felt everything slip away until there were just the two of them. “Just concentrate on breathing. People have been doing this for thousands of years. Before laser hair removal, before facials, before whatever else it is you do—there were only goats and milkmaids.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. My family comes from Bangalore. We’ve never been milkmaids.”
“Until today.”
There was no arguing with logic—or the fact that she was a pair of pigtails away from yodeling on the mountain with Heidi. With a sigh, she capitulated. “Okay, fine. You win.”
Maybe this letting-go thing wouldn’t be as terrible as she imagined. Maybe, with Noah’s hand holding her in place, she could slip a little and no one would ever know the difference. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her mouth. No taking any sensory chances here. Doing her best to ignore the male presence at her back and the four-legged one at her front, she said, “I’m calm now. What do I do?”
“First, you need to strip the teat.”
“I need to what?” she wailed.
Kendra’s shoulders began shaking almost immediately, a reaction that settled in Noah’s gut as though they were somehow attached. Goddammit. He’d been so eager to prove that his way was the best way that he’d pushed too hard, forced her out of her comfort zone like a complete and utter ass. And now she was crying.
“Forget it,” he said, quickly backtracking. “I can do this later. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Oh, it really is.” Kendra shook even more. “You said strip the teat.”
Behind him, Lincoln let out what could only be termed a guffaw. “Damn, Noah. You never told me farming was so hot.”
Noah looked back and forth between them, his initial alarm giving way to exasperation as they collapsed in a fit of giggles. “How old are you two supposed to be?”
Lincoln ignored him. “Strip it nice and slowly, Kendra. Give that goat something to look forward to.”
“I cannot touch her udder if you keep talking in that creepy voice. She and I will both be scarred for the rest of our lives.”
“Really, guys?”
Kendra flapped her hands in front of her, trying to compose herself and failing miserably. “I’m sorry. All this performance anxiety is making me giddy.”
He waited until they’d manage to stifle the bulk of their mirth before handing her the
metal bucket, his movements jerky with relief. It would take a lot more than a barnyard animal to break her.
“Ready now?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m good. I promise.” Kendra peeked up at him, eyes flashing. “I’m one hundred percent ready to defile your beast.”
You aren’t the only one. Without giving himself any time to linger on that thought, he held up his hand in an okay symbol. Understanding him to mean she was to do the same, she lifted her hand and mirrored his movements. “The, ahem, stripping portion of today’s events is just rural speak for letting the first one or two squirts go to waste. If anything’s going to have bacteria in it, it’s those initial bits.”
“Well, that’s anticlimactic.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Her voice dropped a notch. “Not with me.”
As he couldn’t think of a way to reasonably introduce feminist literature into the discussion from there, he plunged forward with his instructions. There wasn’t much to it, really. Work the fingers into a fist, fill the bucket, give Goat a tickle and a thanks when all was said and done. The animal was so used to it by now that she barely registered the presence of softer hands and a lighter touch.
Of course, he and Lincoln weren’t impervious to it. Joke though they might, there was no mistaking that Kendra had deft hands—ones that knew how to make short work of her task. Squeeze, pump, release. Squeeze, pump, release.
It grew so quiet in the milking shed he could almost hear the blood moving through his veins and settling in his groin. Clearly, this had been a bad idea. Kendra had a way of turning the most innocent actions into a three-ring circus of sex—and a farm, full of long wood handles and growths thrusting from the hard-packed earth, had enough fodder to keep those actions going much longer than the average man could stand.
He heard Lincoln cough behind him and immediately shoved down his stirrings of lust, aware of how unfair he was being. Kendra wasn’t responsible for how he and Lincoln reacted to her proximity. That was how this problem had started in the first place. When Lincoln looked at her, all he seemed able to see was a desire to tease, to taunt, to torment. Hell, yes—she was clearly capable of those things. This whole predicament was a testament to that.
But right now?
She was just a woman milking a goat. Anything Noah added to her motivations was on him. Anything Lincoln felt she owed him was a fabrication of his own frustrations. Nothing more.
“How’d I do?” She sat back and pointed at the bucket, her smile containing nothing but pride at a job well done. “That was only about one-third as disgusting as I imagined it would be.”
“You’re a natural,” Noah promised, swallowing heavily.
“I thought it would at least kick you or something,” Lincoln said. The flash of irritation that crossed his face did much to raise Noah’s hackles. What exactly did he want from her? If she wasn’t going to fall at his feet, she needed to fall, period? “Who knew you were a goat whisperer on top of everything else?”
Sensing they needed a minute to themselves, Noah led Goat out of the shed with a gentle tug on her rope. As he wasn’t accustomed to anyone but himself taking charge around the place, he failed to notice at first that the wire gate had been left open. Unfortunately, Goat wasn’t nearly as distracted as him. Taking one look at her opportunity for freedom and all the garbage she could eat, she dashed to the right and made a break for it.
Experience had long since taught him that if left to her own devices, Goat would find her way back to the Nelsons’ house, where she would bleat pleadingly for a chance to return to the bosom of her original owners. Nothing made him feel like more of a failure in life quite as much as a four-legged animal announcing her clear preference for any society but his, so he took off after her, his gait hurried but not frantic. Goat wasn’t much for stamina. He’d catch her eventually.
“You wanted entertainment?” Kendra glanced out the doorway just in time to see Noah dashing off in pursuit of his beloved pet. Not for him an ungainly squat underneath a goat’s udder—oh, no. He got to look ruggedly athletic in a slow trot over the hills. He was one pair of red swim trunks away from being the embodiment of all her teenage Baywatch fantasies. “Well, now you have it. It’s on two legs and heading due west.”
Lincoln brushed her shoulder with his as he came to stand at her side. They watched, quiet for once, as Noah stalked his prey, his movements so swift and assured he looked one special-effects artist away from becoming a werewolf.
Forget hoeing. This was what she wanted to spend three hours watching him do.
“How did you meet him, anyway?” she asked, unable to keep the admiration out of her voice. “I’m guessing it wasn’t the local 4H club.”
She ignored the searching look Lincoln gave her, which she didn’t see so much as feel seared into the side of her head. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I know almost nothing about him, to be honest.”
The answer seemed to please him. He shrugged. “He used to spend a month every summer out here when he was a kid—I’d count the days until he arrived. It might be hard to believe, but I wasn’t always the suave, dashing man of the law you see standing before you. I got picked on a little—okay, a lot. But Noah was different.”
“He protected you from bullies?” That was too adorable for words.
“That’s not what I said.” He scowled. “We protected each other, Kendra. We still do.”
She didn’t bother to ask him from what.
* * *
“I haven’t snuck out of the house with a boy since I was sixteen and had a major crush on Timmy Caldwell.” Kendra carried her shoes to the door, laughing at the look of guilt Noah cast back over the house. You’d think they were heading out to rob a bank or something. “Relax, Noah. He’s sound asleep and likely to stay that way until dawn. All that goat milking zapped his strength.”
“I’m not worried about him waking up.”
“Oh, yeah?” He could have fooled her. “Then why do you look as though I’m leading you straight to the gates of sin?”
He studied her carefully. “Because you are.”
Please. She wasn’t leading him; he was traveling right alongside her. Besides—there was no rule that said they had to walk through the gates once they got there. They could always just stop and admire the view on the other side.
“You don’t have to come with me. A moonlit walk is just as effective alone—probably more so, if I’m supposed to be mulling over the Brontës while I’m out there. I can spend all night crying at the moors and cursing the day I met you.”
“But there could be wildlife. Dangerous wildlife like rabbits and deer and mosquitos. What kind of man would I be if I let you battle them alone?”
She laughed and slipped on her shoes, allowing Noah to lead the way along a dirt path heading south. She’d come to recognize that his house was a kind of crossroad for the network of trails and pathways that wound around his land. He was literally the center of his own little world out here.
“That’s very heroic of you, but I can squish my own mosquitos,” she said. “I’m not completely inept.”
The crunch of their feet as they walked side by side, not touching or talking, created a cadence for their forward movement. It was difficult to see where they were going through the voluminous curtain of clouds overhanging the earth, but the occasional glint of the moon kept them on track.
It was nice, in a spooky, otherworldly sort of way. They were two people, for all intents and purposes alone in the world, content to be in one another’s company. At least, she felt content. Despite the constant frustration mounting between her legs and around her heart, she was finding a surprising amount of Zen among the trees and dirt. Who knew?
“I don’t think I told you how well you handled Goat today. I was more impressed than you could possibly
know.” They’d reached the end of the trail, which wound the opposite way from the pond toward the back perimeter of his land. The dirt was packed better along this trail, so Noah had directed them this way to save Kendra’s shoes. Now that they’d arrived, though, he realized there might have been more sentimental reasons.
“Yeah, well.” The flash of a moonbeam across her face almost took his breath away, but she turned and it was gone. “It’s not that strange. I’ve never been one to shy away from an unpleasant task.”
“Occupational hazard?”
“More of a general life hazard. There’s a reason I’m such a cautious human being. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been the only one to step up when everyone else is too scared. To say something, to take responsibility, to poke the gelatinous mound in the lunchroom corner to figure out if it’s alive.”
Her natural competence made that easy to imagine. There was no question anymore why Lincoln chose to turn to her in times of trouble—she was cool and efficient under pressure. “And was it alive?” he asked. “The gelatinous mound?”
“Nope. It was just moldy Jell-O.” She laughed. “But we’d have never known that if I hadn’t duct-taped several forks together and stood on a chair to see if it would move when stabbed.”
Noah had never admired someone as much as he did Kendra in that moment. To look at her, one would assume she didn’t even eat Jell-O, let alone attack it. She was a woman of untold depths.
“Come on. I want to show you something.” He couldn’t help himself from taking her hand and leading her over the swell of the hill to where a scraggly black ash tree struggled to flourish among a grove of towering pines. Her fingers fell naturally through his as they scrambled up the slope, and he was able to delude himself—if only for the moment—that she needed his grip to keep from falling.
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