by Fiona Lowe
“Look, I’m really sorry she tried to bite you but she was just protecting me.”
In one fluid movement he rose to his feet and well over six feet of pure, unadulterated maleness stared down at her. A sweep of heat rushed through her, darting directly to the apex of her thighs, making it glow deliciously hot. It hadn’t done that in a very long time and she fought hard not to press her legs together and gulp at all that gorgeousness.
Incredulity crawled across chiseled cheeks. “Protecting you from what exactly?”
This time she swallowed and said quietly, “You.”
“Me?” His arms flew out in front of him. “What the hell did I do?”
Maggie-May growled and moved toward him. Erin grabbed her diamante-studded collar and tucked the wriggling and barking dog firmly under her arm. “You got a bit close to me at the car.”
His jaw tightened and then indecently long eyelashes—the length and thickness women paid a lot of money to have created for them—brushed against his cheeks for an instant before he hooked his gaze to hers and seemed to take in a deep breath. “I apologize for invading your personal space.”
Anytime, the frustrated woman inside her called out loudly. Erin instantly stomped on her inner slut and nodded her acceptance of his terse apology, which really didn’t sound much like one at all. Taciturn and brusque. Hmm, he was a farmer after all.
“Shh, Maggie-May.” She stroked her dog, who gave her a confused look and finally stopped barking, but kept her eyes fixed firmly on Farmer Anderson. Meanwhile, Erin struggled against the morass of mud that slurped around her, feeling her feet slipping inside her completely inappropriate and now ruined footwear. Her wickedly expensive sandals, whose purchase she’d justified as an investment in her business because they gave her the air of a successful photographer, which impressed potential clients.
As much as she wanted to get up out of the mud on her own, the fact she was holding Maggie-May meant she couldn’t get her balance. Meanwhile, Luke Anderson hadn’t moved a muscle and she was starting to wonder if Connie had been right about him deliberately ignoring her calls. Cross with herself for having to ask for help, cross with him for not offering any, she blurted out, “Would it be asking too much for you to give me a hand?”
Blue eyes narrowed. “Is that useless fluff ball of yours going to bite me?”
She wanted to growl at him just like Maggie-May. “Put it this way. If I let her go so I can get up on my own, she just might. If you help me up while I hold her, she won’t.”
Without a word, he extended his hand. She slid her palm against his and as she gripped his hand, he wrapped long, work-hardened fingers firmly around her wrist. A vortex of tingling shimmers spun up her arm and then exploded like fireworks in her chest before raining down and spreading through her like the warmth of mulled wine, and stripping her limbs of their strength.
Damn it. As lovely as it was to have a man make her feel like this, Luke Anderson wasn’t the guy of choice. She locked her knees against the boneless feeling. It wouldn’t be a good look to rise to her feet only to fall. The feminist in her definitely didn’t want that to happen.
“Brace yourself against me,” he said.
Yes, please. She shook her head against the wanton hoe the mud seemed to have released.
Luke sighed and frustration played over his lips. “Just do as I say or we’ll both end up back in the mud.”
She quickly preempted and stomped on any outrageous comments her girly parts might make on that visual and said, “Ready when you are.”
He pulled and with a departing slurping sound from the bog, she found herself nose to shoulder with him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The perfunctory words sounded weary and lacked the backup of their true meaning. It was more along the lines of, You’re a complete pain in the ass.
She gazed down at her new-season but now mud-stained silk top, horrified to see it was not only see-through but clung to her like a second skin. She hastily brought Maggie-May up against her chest to cover her black lace demi-bra which this morning had seemed the perfect choice but was now hiding absolutely nothing. She bit her lip, hating what she knew she had to ask. “Is it at all possible for me to use your shower?”
Luke Anderson seemed to be staring so intently at her shoulder that she glanced to her left but all she could see was more mud.
“It’s possible, Miss...?”
Oh, God, she hadn’t even introduced herself. “Erin. Erin Davis.” She wasn’t prepared to volunteer anything more until she was clean and wearing clothes that didn’t expose her breasts to the world.
“Well, Erin Davis, it doesn’t look like your car is going anywhere without the help of my tractor.” Resignation clung to his words. “I suppose you can take a shower at the house while I pull it out.”
An image of him naked with water sluicing down his body slammed into her so hard she swayed. Oh man, who knew falling in mud messed with hormones.
This guy is business not recreation, she told herself firmly. Besides, the hostile way he was looking at her—as if she was one giant problem that had to be solved—left her in no doubt that even if they’d met under better circumstances, he wouldn’t be interested in her at all.
“Thank you, Mr. Anderson.”
He quirked a brow but it wasn’t accompanied by even the hint of a smile hovering on his wide mouth. “My father’s Mr. Anderson.”
She waited for the call me Luke, which would be the logical progression of his sentence, but it didn’t come. It left her unable to read him and that in itself was unsettling because she normally had no problem doing that with people. Using her “keep everyone happy” voice, she said, “A shower sounds wonderful,” and she grabbed her overnight bag from the backseat and locked the car.
“Seriously? You think someone’s going to go to the effort of pulling your aging vehicle out of the quagmire and stealing it?” Luke’s face wore the bemused expression of someone who thought he was dealing with a fool.
“I’ve got a lot of valuable—” She stopped herself milliseconds before mentioning her cameras. “My laptop’s in there.” She adjusted the overnight bag in her hand so it didn’t rub up against her muddy legs. “Ready to go?”
He didn’t offer to carry her bag. “Almost. Leave your dog in the car.”
She hugged her precious close. “I’m not leaving Maggie-May here all on her own surrounded by scary cows.”
He folded his arms across his sizeable chest and they rested there, implacable and fixed. “I think she’s proven that she’s more than capable of looking after herself. Besides, she can guard your laptop.”
She ignored his sarcasm and played it straight. “Surely out in the country, locking the car is enough?”
“You’re missing the point. I’m not having that thing anywhere near my house or what’s left of my mother’s garden.”
“But she needs a bath too and—”
He shook his head, his firm and square jaw slicing through the air. “You can leave the dog and have a shower or you can stay here with the dog and I’ll return with the tractor after I’ve cleaned up. It’s your choice.”
She stared at his resolute stance but he didn’t budge an inch. It was Hobson’s choice—no choice at all. She loved her dog but she desperately needed a shower and without it she’d contaminate her car with manure and mud. Given the conversation she was yet to have with him about the sunflower field, she couldn’t afford to alienate Luke Anderson, who was now looking and sounding exactly like a farmer—grouchy, pessimistic and intransigent. She was tempted to make a comment about the weather just to test her theory.
Accepting the inevitable, she quickly wiped the mud off her dog’s feet before dropping a kiss on her muddy head and placing her on her blanket in the car. “You stay, Maggie-May. Sit. We won’t let that mean old far
mer be our buzz-kill,” she muttered into soft doggy hair. “I won’t be long.”
“Can you hurry it up?” Irritation flattened all the melodic qualities of Luke’s deep voice. “I’ve got cows to milk tonight as well as rescuing your car.”
Maggie-May put her paws endearingly on her arms as if to say, He’s a butt-head.
Erin agreed.
* * *
Luke and his relief milker, Brett, had finished the milking and the cleaning of the milking parlor in just under two hours. The Erin Davis fiasco—she’d finally left just before five—had meant he’d started late so to be done by seven had him feeling pretty pleased. It was proof that the alterations he’d made to the parlor last winter—alterations his father had refused to make—were paying off and saving him valuable time each day. It wasn’t so vital in winter but in summer when he was cropping as well, he needed to maximize every precious minute. He found himself whistling the last tune he’d heard on the parlor radio as he rode the four-wheeler with Mac sitting behind him, back to the house. The tune died on his lips when he came through the home gate and saw a familiar and now-clean station wagon parked next to his truck.
Erin Davis, chaos personified. He killed the engine and jumped down. He’d said goodbye to her in the top pasture three hours ago. Before she’d left, he’d finally asked her why she’d been looking for him because after the debacle of the mud and the bogged car, she’d never actually said. Her response to his question had been unexpected. She’d looked a little leery, smiled apologetically, mumbled something about a miscommunication and had then started up the car.
Despite the fact her reaction seemed very strange—especially as she’d told him when they’d first met she was specifically looking for him—he hadn’t pursued it further. He really didn’t want to know. Hell, he was still smarting from overhearing her telling her dog he was mean and old. Just lately he might have been dragging himself through the day, but damn it, he was only thirty. And where did she get off calling him mean? Damn it, he’d been the one inconvenienced. He’d been the one who’d gone out of his way to help her by hauling out the car she’d put into the bog. As far as he was concerned, the sooner a woman like her, with her clichéd views of farms and farmers and her ridiculous excuse of a dog, left the property, the better.
So why the hell was she back now?
Not that she’d left his head in the past three hours. He’d tried hard to shift the image out of his head that her wet and translucent top had branded on his brain, but attaching milking cups to cows’ udders for two hours had made it impossible not to think about breasts. The visual of her cold nipples standing to attention behind seductive black lace and saying look at me, refused to be banished. As did the fact that, of course, he’d looked. Hell, he was male and what guy wasn’t going to sneak a peek at the gift of virtually naked breasts?
Still, breasts or no breasts, Erin Davis and her mutt were a royal pain in the ass and he’d been pleased to see the back of them. Mac growled and then Luke heard the yapping of her dog. He instantly spun around, planning to protect his ankles. To his surprise, the thing was inside the car, alone, and clawing at the partially open windows. Interesting. So where was its owner?
He strode up onto the porch, telling Mac to lie down on the dog bed that now lived there, having been moved into its current position when his parents had left. Using the old “hands-free” boot remover his great-grandfather had fashioned from an old piece of wood by whittling out a deep V, he tugged off his mucky boots. As he pulled open the screen door and stepped into the wet area, the aroma of onions and garlic drifted out from the kitchen, hitting his nostrils. What the—?
Luke lived alone and tonight’s meal was going to be a reheat of last night’s leftovers—a meal he’d cooked and it hadn’t tasted or smelled like this the first time. Someone was cooking in his kitchen. Only the entrenched routine drilled into him by his parents of entering the house and leaving the farm behind had him washing his hands before he marched into the kitchen. Erin Davis was moving methodically around the old farmhouse table laying silverware, the pattern on her bold, black-and-white polka-dot Capri pants making his eyes spin.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
She looked up and smiled brightly. “Country hospitality.”
He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “You’re from the city.”
“How do you know that?”
He couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Your clothes, your fear of cows and general aversion to mud.”
Her chin shot up. “No woman, city or country, is ever going to enjoy a manure bath.”
He stifled a desire to smile at her indignation and the way it made her eyes sparkle. “True, but then there’s that white fluff you insist on calling a dog. No self-respecting country woman would be seen dead with something like that in her purse. But more to the point, nowhere in the hostess handbook does it say coming uninvited into someone’s kitchen is the definition of country hospitality.”
Her smile faltered slightly but she extended her arm in a ta-da flourish. “I’ve cooked you a ‘thank-you’ meal.”
His stomach betrayed his chagrin at her being here, by rumbling in response to the delicious smell of roasting meat emanating from the oven. Every other part of him thought she shouldn’t be here at all.
Why? How is this any different from Mrs. Norell stopping by with a cake or a casserole and staying for coffee?
It was plenty different. He’d never once tried to picture the sprightly sixty-five-year-old woman naked, whereas he was having trouble thinking about Erin any other way. Shit. He hadn’t realized that by not dating, it had put him seriously off his game. It had to stop. Visions of black lace and creamy breasts had to go. Erin Davis was annoying, had a useless excuse of a dog and, in the classic sense of the word, she wasn’t even pretty.
Harnessing his determination to get his body back on an even keel, he fixed his gaze on her large nose. “You thanked me by leaving after I towed your car.”
Her teeth snagged her bottom lip and his gaze slipped momentarily. He hauled it back.
“Words weren’t enough. Supper is the least I could do.”
“Hmm.”
Her smile looked forced. “Farmers really are men of few words.”
Actually, Luke enjoyed a good discussion over either a beer on a hot night or a fine wine with a special meal, but he had no plans to disabuse her of her preconceived ideas.
The tip of her tongue briefly touched the peak of her lip and then she cleared her throat. “Despite what you think about me, I do realize I caused you unnecessary work today and I feel bad that Maggie-May ripped your jeans.”
The bruise on his leg throbbed. “Keeping that thing away from me is more than enough thanks.”
Her eyes flashed like sunlit shards of jade and with a jerk, she gripped the back of the nearest chair, her knuckles turning white. As she straightened the chair, the legs scraped loudly against the floor, but she remained silent.
The fact she hadn’t rushed to defend her dog both surprised and disappointed him in an odd sort of way. He couldn’t work her out. When she’d knocked him into the mud, she’d had no qualms telling him exactly what she thought but now she said nothing? He surreptitiously studied her face and detected a tension around the edges of her mouth hovering under the smile.
Something was definitely up. He’d bet his bottom dollar there was more to this “thank-you” supper than just gratitude for towing her car. Exactly what though, he had no clue, but he felt sure it was connected with the reason that had initially brought her to the farm this afternoon. The fact she was now being so polite indicated that she wanted to keep on his good side.
His stomach rumbled again. Although his first reaction to finding her in the house had been to ask her to leave, needs won out. Lunch had been a very long time ago. He was
very hungry, and the food smelled delicious. An idea started to form. He could enjoy a home-cooked meal and get her not only to leave the house and farm, but more importantly guarantee that she’d never want to return again. Given she had him pegged as a stereotypical farmer, why not behave like every cliché rolled into one? This was going to be fun.
Regretting he didn’t have a piece of straw to chew and that he’d done the right thing by hanging up his hat before entering the kitchen, he now sat down at the table. Overriding years of exceptional table manners along with the fact he’d always treated women as equals, he picked up the knife and fork, balanced them on their ends and brought them down onto the table with a clunk. “I’m starving. Bring it.”
Her finely shaped chestnut brows hit her hairline but again she didn’t rise to the bait. “Certainly.”
She walked into the kitchen and dished up roasted vegetables and succulent prime rib and he caught a flash of pastry in the oven. Pie? His mouth watered and he had to silence the admiration he always voiced for anyone who could put together a meal. Sadly Wade had inherited the cooking gene from his talented mother, leaving Keri and himself struggling to fry eggs.
Erin returned to the table holding a gravy boat and expertly balancing two plates on her arm, waitress style. She slid one plate in front of him and positioned the boat before circling the table to sit opposite him.
As she started to lower herself into the chair he said, “The Anderson men have always eaten alone.”
She stalled, her body hovering just above the chair. “Excuse me?”
He pointed with his knife. “My mother served us and then ate her meal at the counter standing up in case we needed anything extra.”
Her eyes widened into huge discs of green similar to the waters off the coast of Australia and he had the distinct urge to lean forward and dive in. Instead he shoveled a large piece of meat into his mouth and said, “Get me some water.”
If she’d been standing in the woods on a hot day, the sparks from her eyes would have started a forest fire, but still she didn’t light into him with the expected verbal attack. Instead, her body coiled with tension and she rose, picked up her plate and returned to the kitchen. With her back to him he allowed himself a smile at the massive effort she was putting into not stomping or throwing her meal at him. Meltdown was only a matter of time.