A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(33)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“But William Sherman’s girlfriend fell for another man and stood poor Will up a month before the wedding,” she called over her shoulder. “So he killed himself, as distraught brokenhearted lovers are wont to do, and now when couples are out on the road here, getting fresh with one another, William doesn’t like it.”

The thick sultry air moved around her, the sweet scent of wildflowers clinging to the air, and Shelby breathed deeply as she ran.

Boston was keeping pace by jogging, just behind her. She knew he could catch her easily if he wanted to, but he merely watched her with dark, dark eyes that raked over her body and seared her with lust. “Oh, yeah? What does he do?”

“He chases people, just like this, down the road for a long frightening mile and just when they think he’s gone . . .” Shelby stopped running and whirled around. “He jumps on their car and shakes.” She gripped Boston’s shoulders and rattled them back and forth. “Until the terrified couple speeds on, vowing never to engage in sinful behavior at Lovers’ Lane again.”

Boston jerked a little under Shelby’s powerful grip and felt an arousal he had never experienced in his entire long and lust-filled life. Shelby’s eyes were wide, bright with humor and the mischievous tone of her tale, her voice eerie and quiet, rising at the proper places to spook him, and he thought she was the most f**king gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in his life. He wanted to take her right there in the goddamn road, then whisk her away to the White House and let Nanny Baskins lock her up in his bedroom forever.

Being with her, under the Cuttersville sky, on a dusty road in the middle of nothing, listening to her silly story, was the most fun he had ever had in his adult life, and he wanted to show her that, appreciate her fully and completely.

“Did you ever see William Sherman?”

She shrugged with a crooked smile. “Nah. I never saw anything at all until you came along.”

Her pale soft lips were calling him, and he was close enough, her hands still on his shoulders, that if he leaned down, he could taste her there, on the side of Miller’s Road where the jilted lover haunted.

“If I kissed you right now do you think he’d chase us?”

Shelby pushed back some of that wild horse’s mane she called hair and glanced around, breath catching in excitement. “I suppose he might.”

Boston bent with the intention of taking her mouth, possessing her fully beneath him, and slaking his burning hunger for her, but she darted backward. “Just where the hell are you going?” he asked.

“To the Bigleys’ barn, just down the road. Next stop on the tour.”

Her sexy little behind sauntered off, a definite feminine sultry swagger in her walk that he’d never seen before. She was toying with him, turning him on intentionally. He suddenly realized she was seducing him, with the tight shorts and the no bra and the teasing comments.

He liked it. It was working. He was just about completely fried into a drooling idiot in desperate need of sexual release.

“Does the Bigleys’ barn have another victim of love’s cruelties?”

Shelby veered off the road into a field, mindless of weeds tall enough to rival her. “Nope. The Bigleys’ barn has a cow.”

“You’re taking me to see a cow?” He had no interest in livestock. The only way he wanted to encounter a cow was medium-well on his dinner plate. “We could probably skip this one, Shelby. I prefer to meet cows after their death.”

She laughed and ducked around a particularly violent-looking weed with spikes. “Well, you’re in luck. This cow is dead.”

Boston gave the weed doubling as a weapon a wide berth and was grateful he’d worn his jeans. “Dead? You know, let me rephrase that. I don’t want to meet any cow, ever, that isn’t cooked into some sort of meal. Before it reaches that state, I’m not interested.”

Shelby popped out of the weeds into a clearing, and a big red barn rose in front of them. It had an Ohio bicentennial flag painted on the side and looked a lot more solid than he had been expecting. He glanced around half expecting to see a cow corpse littering the ground.

Hands on hips, she shook her head at him. “You’re just downright ridiculous, you know that? This cow, Strawberry, is a ghost. She died in nineteen eighty-six, struck by lightning.”

“Cows can get struck by lightning?” The things he was learning were just phenomenal. He would be returning to Chicago with intimate knowledge of mosquitoes, bacon grease, and paranormal cows. How many Samson execs could boast that?

“Strawberry went to that big grassy field in the sky sure as shootin’, but for whatever reason she’s still here in the Bigleys’ barn, mooing on many a summer night.”

He’d heard enough. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would a cow be haunting a barn? Did the lightning blind her and she couldn’t find her way to the light?”

Shelby snorted and slapped him on the arm, giggling. “You know, you really make me laugh sometimes.”

Whether that was a compliment or not, he was going to take it as such. “No one’s ever really thought I was funny before.”

“Really?” Shelby headed toward the barn. “You’re kind of witty in a pretentious sort of way.”

He should have quit while he was ahead.

Shelby shoved open the big door and disappeared into the barn.

“Aren’t we trespassing?” Though they had actually approached the property from the back, he could see a white farmhouse not too far ahead. A dog was barking as he ducked inside after Shelby.

“No, I have a standing invitation to take my tour through here. In exchange, I take the groups by the Bigleys’ produce and honey stand. They usually sell about fifty to a hundred dollars a week to the tour-goers so they consider it worth it to have me in their barn. But this week they’re in West Virginia visiting relatives for the holiday weekend.”

It wasn’t a big barn, in Boston’s ignorant opinion. It was also empty except for a tractor and a big pile of hay. It didn’t even smell.

“I thought barns had animals. This is just a tractor garage.”

Shelby turned to face him, hands on her hips. “It is, really. The Bigleys built a bigger barn ten years ago, but they can’t tear this one down for historical preservation reasons. This barn is a hundred and fifty years old. So they just store the tractor here.”

“What’s the hay for?” Boston walked over and stuck his toe into the big pile.