Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(4)
Author: Bella Andre

Instead of answering her strange question, he told her, “My ad wasn’t a joke.”

“I’m not joking,” she said with a stubborn tilt of her chin.

His heart raced again from nothing more than seeing the flush in her cheeks while she stood her ground in front of him.

“Look, I’ve got a lot of work to take care of today before the sun sets.” He gave a pointed look at the fence post. “Like fixing the post you smashed into, for one.”

Anyone else would have left by then, given the way he was snarling at her, but did this beautiful girl get the hint and get back in her car to leave him the hell alone?

No.

Instead of leaving, she took another step toward him on the most gorgeous pair of legs he’d ever seen in his life. “I can help you.”

He made himself sweep a hard, unimpressed look over her, even though in his previous life he would have drunk her in with extreme pleasure.

“What experience do you have working on a farm?”

When she bit her lower lip, his blood pressure shot so high he could actually hear it rushing in his ears over the ongoing complaints of his chickens, who were still in high excitement over the car, the crash, and the very unexpected visitor in her glittering outfit.

“Well,” she said slowly, “none yet. But I’m very determined.”

He laughed out loud at that, a rusty sound that held absolutely no pleasure in it.

“Determination isn’t going to get the new coop finished or the fence post replaced. I need someone who can actually do the work I need them to do.” Jesus, he couldn’t believe he was actually standing here debating her qualifications with her. “You can’t be my new farmhand.”

She looked momentarily distraught as she stared at him and then back down at his want ad clutched in her fist. He could almost hear the gears churning in her pretty head, before she nodded as if she’d made a decision.

“Tell me something you need done and I’ll do it. Right now, in front of you, so you can see that I’m serious.” She faced him squarely. “I want this job, Grayson.”

The sound of his name on her lips, her slightly husky voice playing out the vowels a little longer than the other letters, made his gut clench tight. He didn’t like the way he was reacting to her.

Didn’t like the fact that he was reacting at all.

He looked down pointedly at her shoes. “You’re telling me that you’re going to get to work on my farm in those?”

She glanced down at her sparkly high heels as if she’d forgotten she was wearing them. How, he wondered, could she have possibly forgotten when her feet had to be killing her?

She shrugged. “Sure. So what do you want me to do?”

He scowled as he scanned his property for something she could try to do without hurting herself, since he couldn’t waste the time it would take to get her to the doctor. Still, it looked like the thirty-minute delay had just turned into an hour. At least.

* * *

First chance she got, Lori was going to give that kid at the General Store a piece of her mind. Why hadn’t he told her that Grayson was not only young, but also one of the most ridiculously good looking and virile men she’d ever set eyes on?

Not, of course, that she’d asked, but she could guarantee that if the sandwich maker had been a teenage girl, she wouldn’t have forgotten to mention those very important details.

Only, it didn’t matter that he was good looking, did it? Not when she was completely done with men.

Done.

She didn’t trust them anymore, not one single man that she wasn’t already related to. They were all cheating, manipulative scum. Still, it wasn’t exactly easy to remember all of that when she was standing in front of two hundred pounds of muscle, piercing brown eyes, and a square jaw liberally dusted with dark stubble that any woman in her right mind would want to reach out to run her fingertips over right before she leaned in for a ki—

Lori forcefully shook the thought out of her head. Okay, so maybe the second she set eyes on the magnificent Grayson she should have climbed right back into her car and gotten the heck out of there. After leaving her insurance information for the busted fence, of course. But it had felt like every word out of his mouth was a challenge.

And Lori had never been able to back down from a challenge.

“So,” she said, “what’s first on your list?”

Just as she asked the question, a chicken decided to peck at one of the sparkles on her shoes. She tried to step out of the way, but it just followed her and pecked harder at her foot.

“Pick up the hen and put her in the coop.”

She knew the joke was supposed to be on her, that he thought she was going to screw this up, but how hard could it be to pick up a chicken?

“Sure, no problem.”

As Lori squatted and reached for the small body, the chicken was so focused on trying to eat her shoe-sparkle that she didn’t have any trouble getting her hands around its middle. Only, just as she was about to actually lift the bird off the ground, it looked up at her with alarm, squawked its displeasure, then wriggled out of her hands and started running in the opposite direction.

She didn’t think before muttering a curse word as she stood up to go after the hen. “Come here, you,” she said in what was supposed to be a soothing voice, but was tinged with more than a little frustration. “Time to go back into your coop.”

When she was only a couple of feet from the bird, she made herself wait until it focused on something crawling on the drive before reaching for it again. But it was smarter about her intention this time and before she could even get a hand on its feathers, it let out another loud cry, then half-flew, half-ran away from her.

Lori brushed her hair out of her eyes. She was sweating now and had dirt smudged across the front of her top and along her tights. But she wasn’t even close to giving up. No sir. If Grayson thought this was enough to send her packing, he was sorely mistaken.

She was already heading after the chicken again when Grayson cut her off at the pass. “I can’t let you upset her any more than you already have. It’ll throw off her laying cycle.”

“I didn’t mean to upset her,” Lori protested, immediately feeling guilty about having done irreparable damage to the chicken’s egg production.

He reached down to pick up the hen, and rather than reach for its tail or wings, he cupped his hands in a gentle V on either side of its body and lifted it. With one hand firmly under the chicken, he used the other to hold it close to his body as he carried it into the coop.