The Stars in the Sky (Giving You ... #2)

by Leslie McAdam

  It dazed me, it was so beautiful, and it felt like forgiveness. I thought that I’d do anything to see him smile like that again.

  And like that, things shifted slightly. I realized that I hadn’t sat next to him just to fuck with him. I sat next to him because I was very much attracted to him, drawn to him like a magnet, even though he was my opponent on issues that mattered very much to me. I couldn’t seem to leave him alone in the short period of time I’d known him and whenever he was around he was the only one I paid attention to.

  He seemed to be the same way, because I noticed him conscientiously not looking at me, but I could have sworn he’d just been watching. We were two galactic bodies orbiting each other, pulled by gravity, but repelled by an equal force.

  Okay, I don’t know if that exists in physics but that was how I felt.

  And I wanted more of him.

  He continued, quietly, still smiling, "But you can always ask to see and if they wanna show you, then that's okay."

  See what? My breasts? Or his ranch?

  Guess I'd find out.

  Check Yes or No

  WILL PUT TWO FINGERS up to his seductive, full lips, whistled, a loud, piercing whistle, and yelled, "C'mon girl!"

  For a second, I thought he was talking to me, and I went to put my hands to my hips and say "Excuse me?" or a whole lot worse, but then a beautiful, white and mottled gray Australian Shepherd dog came bounding up to him, circled around him in excitement, wagging its tail, and then jumped into the back of Will's truck. So he was calling the dog, not me. Serves me right for making assumptions.

  "This is Trixie," he said, introducing me to his dog. Then he paused a second, eyebrows closing in on each other, looking at me. "You okay with dogs?"

  Was I okay with dogs? I loved dogs! "Hel-lo, gorgeous," I cooed, rubbing behind her ears and putting my face in her ruff. She was fluffy and licked my cheek while I giggled.

  Will let out a breath and looked at me, somewhat satisfied, like I’d passed a test.

  After lunch, we’d bussed our dirty dishes to the kitchen window and then I followed Will out to his truck to get my tour of the top secret quantity of acreage of Headlands Ranch.

  That cowboy drove the biggest truck I'd ever seen, a brand new, white Ford F-350. I hated to think of its freeway gas mileage, let alone the MPG in town. I'd practically needed a stepladder to get up into it. His truck could eat my car for dinner and still have room to spare. Although it was so new that it didn't have license plates, the sides were covered in mud and the inside had dried clumps of earth from his boots. As he saw me gingerly put on my seatbelt, he gave me a half grin. "You okay with things being a little dirty?"

  "Of course," I said, more heartily than I felt. Ignoring the double entendre, I wasn't about to complain and make him think that I was more of an elitist than he already seemed to think. It was strange: part of me could care less what he thought of me because he was an asshole with whom I didn't agree about anything, and part of me told me to be quiet and polite because he was my boss. And there was this other part that felt pulled to him, like I was navigating by his light. Throw in the fact that he was outstandingly good-looking, and I knew what was under his big belt buckle, and it was extremely difficult to know what to do from moment to moment. I figured that I’d continue to wing it, because this was my summer adventure, after all. I liked not knowing what would happen next.

  At least that’s how I justified not thinking about it for the time being.

  He shifted the truck into reverse, turned on country radio—ugh—and started down the rough, dirt road.

  I'd already figured out that Will wasn't much of a talker. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was, so I decided to drill him with questions as we drove.

  "So. You grew up here, huh?"

  "Yep."

  He kept his hand on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, not looking at me.

  "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

  "Nope."

  After a few more one word answers, I realized that this wasn't working well. Still, I kept on.

  "What are we listening to?"

  "George Strait."

  "It's, uh, not bad." This was a white lie. It was definitely country music, and twangy, so it was not my style, but the song was cute, about a girl passing a guy a note in school to "Check Yes or No" if he liked her.

  I felt like that’s what I was doing. Did he like me? Did he want to be my friend?

  He turned and looked at me hard, and then put his eyes back on the dirt road as we bounced along. "Not bad? He has more number one hits than anyone. More than fifty, I think. Not bad." He shook his head. "Christ. What do you listen to?"

  "Anything but country."

  At this, he let out a chuckle. "Shoulda figured."

  As we drove, I watched the landscape change. The compound with the buildings was located west, towards the ocean, sheltered by the hills. We were headed east, going inland, through low plains of strawberries.

  Parking the truck and leaving it running, Will got out, boots on the ground, and I hopped down my side of the truck, Trixie at our heels. "We put in strawberries twice a year. Winter crop and summer crop. This crop will be ready to pick soon. They're organic, so we have to paint an organic pesticide on the flowers when they open to keep the bugs away."

  I loved that he had organic produce.

  "Really? How much effort does that take?"

  "It's a lot of labor. That's one of the reasons why you can charge more for strawberries. On this plain, near the coast, it's cool enough for them. Pretty good growing conditions, although on days like today, it's too hot." He looked at me and I wondered what, exactly, he was thinking was too hot. I stared at his lips just a beat too long and he stared at mine.

  We walked up and down the rows, which were covered in black plastic.

  "Why do you use all this plastic?"

  "Keeps the berries pretty." He stopped at a row. "These were planted a little earlier. Wanna try one?"

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  He picked me a berry and held it out to me, with a look on his face that if I didn’t think that he despised me I’d think he liked me. Then he smiled. “Take a bite.”

  So he was a flirt.

  Okay, I’d flirt with him. I leaned over and bit into the berry as he held it, my lips brushing his fingers, tasting his salt. I’d never eaten a strawberry out of the field. If you were lucky, you could get little strawberries from farmer's markets or smaller grocery stores, which had real flavor unlike the almost wooden ones from the big stores. But this small, red berry that Will gave me? The flavor exploded in my mouth. And it was organic to boot.

  “Oh, it’s so good,” I enthused, a dribble going down my chin. He gave me another look as I wiped the juice off my chin and sucked my finger and he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and adjusted them.

  "Some saps call that a country valentine," he muttered.

  God, I felt so confused. He was clearly flirting with me. But he didn’t like me? Or my politics? And he thought I was hot? What was going on here?

  And what did I think? Setting aside his good looks, if this man was my political opposite, that meant that he believed in racism and homophobia. That meant that he was pro-life and anti-gun control. That he hated environmental regulation. That he didn’t support equal pay for workers and raising the minimum wage. Right?

  All of the things that I cared about.

  And that made me feel stupid, because he wasn’t a potential country fling. He was someone I couldn’t or shouldn’t consider. Because if I got together with him, then I was hypocritical. It was okay to believe what I believed out in the open, paint it on the back of my car and shout it to the world. But if I actually did it, I’d be letting down the side and I couldn’t do that.

  That said, the idea of crossing that boundary felt so hot, like when a CEO is submissive in the bedroom. Shedding my image privately might be freeing. I was entitled to my sexual fantasies. I didn’t
know what to do. I felt like I should do something, but what, I had no idea.

  I broke my gaze away from him and shuffled back to the truck.

  We drove past new avocado orchards, then kept going and went to a higher area, with long rows of large metal hoops, most of them covered in plastic. "What's growing here?" I asked.

  "Blueberries."

  He stopped the truck, again getting out, and this time I totally checked out his ass. Not that I hadn’t done it before. I just let myself do it again. Again, he kept the truck running, but this time, he scanned the area and pulled out his cell phone. I wandered down the rows and fingered the leafy plants, Trixie at my heels. I could hear him talking.

  "Guillermo?" He waited for a response.

  "Hace falta cubrir las moras." The berries needed to be covered. Still, interesting that he spoke Spanish.

  "Bien. Bueno. Adios." He hung up. I walked back to him and looked up into his dark eyes.

  "Where did you learn to speak Spanish?"

  "Here." I rolled my eyes, feigning patience, willing him to go on, and surprisingly, he did. "Grew up with these guys and you gotta talk with them." That was weird and not what I was expecting. If he was conservative, wasn’t he against anyone who didn't speak English? I must have had a weird look on my face, because he asked, defensively, "What?"

  “You’re a Republican.”

  “You know it.”

  “And you speak Spanish.”

  “Yeah.”

  I kicked a rock to the side. "Then how can you support those candidates who want to round up everyone who is not like them and deport them?"

  He rolled his eyes and asked, "Do you really want to get into that darlin'?"

  All I could think at first was how sexy his voice sounded when he called me darlin’. God, I was so fucking shallow sometimes. He brought out the worst in me.

  But no, I wasn’t going to be distracted by the slab of caramel man candy in front of me. I remembered my ethics.

  I let out an annoyed breath. One minute he’s fun and flirty and the next he was . . .

  Not like me.

  Not my type.

  And he was an ass.

  “You bring up politics all the time,” I said, “and you haven’t even asked me what mine are.”

  He smirked. "Because I know you’re a fucking liberal."

  Oh that's enough. We were getting nowhere. And I didn’t need to be insulted like that. I mean, not that being liberal was bad, I was proud of it. But he didn’t need to swear at me. I turned to back to the truck, done with the conversation. "You're a judgmental asshole. You don't even know me."

  He just shook his head and started, "You come here from the city and you have no idea what goes on in a farm—" but I interrupted him, turning around and raising my finger.

  "Oh no? I grew up as a kid of migrant farmworkers," I countered. "I never had a home, going up and down California and Mexico looking for work. My parents worked hard and saved their money and then went to school and got jobs so that my brother and sister and I would have a good life. So don't give me that 'you have no idea' shit. I'm no princess. I work hard and I play hard and I go about my business and try not to hurt anyone."

  He looked exasperated, huffing out in a breath, "Then what's with the hippie-mobile and the crazy shit you eat?"

  "I care about the earth and I don't want to wreck it," I yelled. And I made sure everyone knew it by my actions. My life was a political statement.

  "Neither do I," he argued back. "That's why I work a ranch."

  Hmm. He had a point.

  At this point we had moved closer to each other, unconsciously, our steps closing the gap between us until I stood in front of him, my belly going in and out, and I noticed the sheen of sweat from the hot day on his forehead, the way his hair flopped over and how shiny, dark, and thick it looked . . .

  No.

  I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t have a summer fling with this good-looking jerk. I wasn’t going to be the hypocrite, telling everyone my politics, living it out loud, but secretly perving on a bigot.

  "I just wish you’d stop calling me names," I said, looking up at him, my light brown eyes to his dark.

  He looked down at me, his hand reaching forward and then stopping. An emotion washed over his face that looked like desire.

  "If I do, can I kiss you?"

  Holy shit.

  It was desire.

  Arguing Plus Benefits

  "NO."

  The word was out of my mouth before I could articulate the reason why I didn't want Will to kiss me. The truth was, I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to explore that sensual mouth, get up close and personal, again, with the body I had slammed into when I first met him. I wanted to do more than kiss him. I wanted to feel every inch of his huge, hard body and I wanted him to satisfy the parts of me that tingled when I thought about him. I was suffering from withdrawal from not touching him, even though I'd just met him. Guess this is what happened when you met a man while he was naked.

  But still, no on the kiss. Or, as I thought more about it, perhaps hell no.

  His eye twitched. "What do you mean, no?" He paused, and then he smiled a sexy half smile. "So you'll kiss me anyway, even if I still call you names?" Now I was seeing a new side to him: Playful Will. I liked Playful Will as much, or more, as Naughty Sense of Humor Will and Mischievous Will. It balanced out Asshole Will and Conservative Will, and was intriguing. But no.

  "No. You're my boss." There, a concrete reason percolated to the surface of my brain and came out of my mouth.

  And threw cold water on everything, because I might be a party girl but I wasn’t stupid and I was not going to throw away a job that I really wanted for a guy no matter how handsome he was.

  "I'm not your boss," he said immediately and resolutely.

  Now it was my turn to twitch. "How's that?"

  "Your checks are signed by the Headlands Program, not the Ranch. I run the Ranch. Janine is your boss. Not me. You're just living on my land for the summer. The nonprofit has a separate board of directors from my family trust, provides its own staffing, and I donate the space, animals, and supplies."

  Well, that cleared one hurdle.

  I wondered why I threw so many hurdles up if there was no way in hell I’d ever be with a Republican.

  But still, the answer was no kissing, and I thought of more reasons why. "You chew."

  "So?"

  "It's disgusting."

  He stared at me and gave me a sort of chin lift. "What else you got?"

  The big one. The sin. The crime—at least in my way of thinking.

  "You're a Republican. I have never, to my knowledge, ever kissed a Republican."

  His grin was now a full smile, not a half smile, and honestly, it was dazzling, like before. "Let's try this. I'll give you a choice. We can continue arguing politics all summer—and I think we're a match for each other and I'm looking forward to the arguments, darlin'—and I don't lay a hand on you. Or, we can continue arguing politics all summer, but I can fuck your hot body whenever you want. Which do you pick?"

  I spasmed. His phone rang.

  "'lo?" He strolled off to the side to take his call, his hand in his pocket, and I patted Trixie, who had come up around my legs.

  I wouldn't have guessed that this was the way that my summer adventure was going to happen. Still, I was wildly amused and turned on, but simultaneously repelled. Decisions, decisions.

  I'd just met the guy yesterday, but it wasn't like I'd never had a one-night stand before. I could be a bit wild. Well, total party girl might be a better description of me. But this was potentially more than a one-night stand. It could be for the summer, and frankly, that sounded like fun. Although I didn't need all the bickering that was destined to occur.

  As I thought about it, however, I knew that if things didn't go well with him, I’d have to avoid him for months and that could be awkward, especially if I knew how he was in bed.

  Yum, Will in bed.

&n
bsp; But things were already awkward. I’d already had a preview of his body and it was spectacular. I wasn't avoiding him because I had seen him naked. Quite the opposite, actually.

  So, what to do? I was definitely attracted to him and he was definitely my opposite. I felt pulled to him and pushed away at the same time.

  He was nothing like the guys I’d dated before, who’d been mostly crunchy bohemian types, and a little feminine, honestly. Will was red meat man and I was a vegan. I really didn’t think that this would work.

  And a small voice inside me said that I was scared that if it did work, I’d just have to leave him at the end of summer.

  As I thought about it, though, we were already sniping at each other at every chance, so it was hard to see how things would get any worse. Maybe they'd get better.

  I needed to know more before I made a decision.

  He finished his call and walked back to me and Trixie, stepping just a little closer to me than societal conventions allowed. I felt him even though I didn’t touch him.

  "How Republican, Republican are you?"

  He leaned into me, his eyes amused, his voice low and certain. "Very."

  This meant, as I suspected, that we disagreed on all the things.

  Desperately wishing for a way to make this work, a flash of hope ran through me. Maybe we were just arguing semantics.

  And I chided myself. How easily I considered setting aside my deeply-held beliefs just because of one hot man. What kind of feminist was I where my brain turned off because my body was turned on? Still, I needed to find out more.

  "What do you think of women’s rights? Are you a feminist?"

  All the other guys I’d dated said they were. They might have said it to get me naked, but at least they’d said it.

  He shook his head. Uh-oh. My stomach dropped and I felt disheartened. This was not acceptable. "Not really. Guys and girls are different. Treat 'em different. You gonna argue with me 'bout that?"

  "Obviously."

  He raised an eyebrow and gave me that devastating smile.

  "Bring it on."

  Ohmigod, I wanted him for real now, and I was pissed that he turned my brain to mush. I’m smarter than this. I stepped back, needing space from him and then I realized something. "Since you're not my boss, I can tell you, you're an ignorant dick for saying something like that. Women are still fighting for equal rights. The pay gap and the glass ceiling exist and we have to do something about them."