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Cara was still watching him. He could feel her gaze. Like a weight. Like a noose. “I have nerve damage in my arm. A pin in my hip. The nerve damage isn’t progressing the way it should, hence the doctor’s appointment. I’m not dying, and I’m not certifiable.” Not totally, anyway.
“Okay. Can I help somehow?”
“No. Just reschedule the appointment for whenever.”
“Okay.” Another pause. “Okay,” she said once more, and then, finally, her footsteps retreated.
He took a deep breath, looked out the window at the trees that surrounded his cabin. Help. A foreign concept. One he didn’t know what to do with except push away.
But the offer lingered there, accompanied by a sharp pang of something he’d tried to eradicate from his life. Longing. Loneliness. He wasn’t such an idiot that he thought he’d ever be right in the head enough to have a romantic relationship, but maybe they could have a friendly working one.
That wasn’t...totally out of the realm of possibility, was it? He’d been friends, so to speak, with some of the guys in his regiment. The guys in the dog squad especially.
Cara might be a woman, but she was an off-limits woman, which meant he didn’t have to get all nervous and uncomfortable at the prospect of anything more. There wasn’t the chance for anything more. She was like a fellow soldier, working toward the same goal.
And if she had breasts, a brain-cell-killing smile and always smelled like flowers of some kind, well, he’d find a way to ignore that.
* * *
CARA LOOKED DOWN at the desk and sighed. The enormity of stuff Wes surrounded himself with, half of it junk mail and old receipts that couldn’t possibly be needed, made it feel as if she’d gotten nowhere despite working for almost three hours straight. Well, aside from the little break to tell Wes about his doctor’s appointment and shove her foot in her mouth.
There was progress to be found on the desk; she just couldn’t see it. And that made her feel stupid. Which wasn’t exactly new these days. She needed something to gel.
Asking Wes if he was dying wasn’t gelling. Nor was getting one hundred percent turned down on her offer to help. But, hey, at least she got to keep Sweetness.
Cara’s stomach rumbled, and she chewed her lip. She’d been hungry for an hour. Couldn’t stop thinking about the pie she’d placed back in her bag. She’d need a knife, fork and plate to indulge, and she had brought it for Wes, so she probably shouldn’t eat it.
Though him eating the whole pie didn’t seem totally necessary.
When Wes stepped back into the office, he gave her a quizzical look. Probably because she was standing there staring at nothing. Doing nothing.
“I—I was trying to, um, I was going to take my lunch break. If that’s okay. I—”
He grunted, cutting her off. I suck, suck, suck.
“You have three choices,” he said. “You can eat whatever in here and take off at four. You can go get lunch somewhere in town, which seems like a total waste of time, and you’d have to work till five. Or you can come with me.”
“What happens if I come with you?” Why, oh, why had her brain suddenly made everything dirty? So not okay to think about that right now.
“We take the dogs for a walk. We eat sandwiches out by the creek. We don’t chitchat. And you can take off at four thirty, because it usually only takes me about a half hour.”
“What exactly is your definition of chitchat?” A girl with any ounce of self-preservation would take the first option. She was not that girl.
“Pick a door, Cara.”
He so rarely said her name or addressed her in any way. It was strangely nice when he did. “Door three, please.”
Again, he grunted, offering nothing else as he walked back to the kitchen. For the first time she noticed it. Not quite a limp, but a stiffness. That right leg didn’t move quite as easily as the rest of him.
Or had she noticed because she now knew he had a pin in his hip? Ouch, that sounded bad. Plus nerve damage that wasn’t getting better. Poor guy.
When she stepped into the kitchen, he was standing in front of the small slice of counter that seemed reserved for people food. “Peanut butter or turkey?”
“Um.” It took her brain a few seconds to work out he was asking about sandwiches. “I brought my own lunch.” A sad little packet of tuna and some crackers. “But if you’re offering, I’ll take a turkey sandwich instead.”
Another grunted nonanswer, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t think offering to make her own sandwich would go over well.
“I’ve got Coke in the fridge if you want to grab two.”
She did as he asked, then stood by the door feeling like an idiot with two Coke cans freezing her hands.
Each sandwich went into a baggie. Grabbing a coat off a hook by the door, he shrugged it on, then took the cans from her. He slid one into each pocket, along with a baggie of dog treats. “You wanna carry the sandwiches?”
“Sure. Um, if you bring forks, we can eat pie, too.”
He nodded, pulling open a drawer and taking out two forks. She grabbed her bag, dropped the sandwiches in, then followed him outside.
She’d expected some first day awkwardness—and gotten it with the doctor thing—but walking around and eating with your boss, who happened to be kind of hot and intriguing, felt really weird.
He walked around the cabin to what appeared to be a small barn in the back. Probably a quarter of the size of the ones on her dad’s property, but the color and shape was all barn.
“I make sure all the animals have water and food. Make the petting rounds.”
Cara looked behind them, where Sweetness, Phantom and the other two dogs pranced. “You have more animals?”
“A few cats. Two more dogs. A sheep.”
“A sheep?”
He shrugged, tramping over to the barn and pulling the door open. “He needed a good home. I had a barn.”
“No partridge in a pear tree?”
“I like animals.”
“Because they aren’t annoying like people?”
“I’ve always liked animals. I never had any growing up.”
“Never?”
“I tried a few times, but we always lived in no-animals-allowed places, so I always got in trouble. One time I got us kicked out, so I gave that up. I was going to...”
“You were going to what?”
He was frowning now, and not just his normal scowly resting face. This was full-on pissed off.
“Doesn’t matter.” He stomped into the barn. A few yips rang out, and a cat made figure eights between his legs.
“Why do you keep these guys in here?”
“The cats chose it. The dogs aren’t trained enough yet. They run off if I give them free rein outside, but this gives them some space and we work on boundaries in the evening. Shrimp doesn’t get around too good these days, so it’s safest for him to stay in a pen, although he occasionally escapes.”
“Shrimp?”
“Sheep with a limp. Sheep plus limp. Shrimp.”
“Wes!”
“What? It’s descriptive.” His mouth quirked up. Not quite a smile, but because it was Wes she would count it as a smile.
“Come on.” He went about filling dishes with fresh water and adding food to different bowls. It was obviously his routine, and it seemed to relax him. Except for the few times he’d look up, seem to remember she was there and get all tense and frowny again.
Cara had to wonder why he’d invited her at all if she made him so uncomfortable. But she didn’t question it out loud, because she didn’t want to eat lunch alone. Strange company was better than no company.
She followed him around, and eventually they left the barn. He brought one of the barn dogs with them, so the number of animals trailing after them was now five. He didn’t look at her once as they hiked through the woods, eventually reaching a creek.
It was beautiful and reminded her so much of home, she wanted to splash in the water like she had when she’d been eight. Only it was barely fifty degrees, and walking through the sliver of leaf-filled water between two muddy banks would be ill advised in her flimsy canvas shoes.
“Buttercups! Oh, my favorite.” Shiny yellow petals sprouted next to a big, flat rock Wes stopped at. Spring had always been her favorite season. Spring had meant freedom as a kid. Everyone busy with the farm and the weather finally okay enough she could go out without Mom blowing a worry gasket.
Fresh air and freedom. It made her believe in new beginnings, far more than any January resolution did. So, maybe she needed to seek a little rebirth and new growth of her own.
Grow up. Leave Cara the screwup behind.
Not possible.
She ignored the jerk of a voice in her head and plucked the delicate flowers out of the ground, arranging a few in her hair. A little visual reminder that flowers could grow from nothing but dirt and water and a little sunlight. “How do I look?”
He’d situated himself on the rock, and Cara had a little inward sigh over his pretty eyes before he looked down. Blushing. Definitely blushing. He might have acted as if he didn’t care for her occasional flirting, but obviously he didn’t think she was repulsive.
Maybe he was shy about stuff like that. For some reason, the thought of gruff and grumpy Wes being shy made her feel all warm and squishy.
Which was not okay. At all. He was her boss, and aside from this and a few emergency shifts at the salon, she had no income. Because she hadn’t sucked up the courage to approach Sam again about the pies.
Well, buttercups as her witness, she would.
She settled herself next to Wes. And, yeah, maybe she didn’t have to sit so close, but she was feeling bold now. She handed him his sandwich; he handed her a Coke.
“This place is perfect.”
He cracked open his soda. “Yeah, I like it.”
“You do this every day?” With Phantom, Sweetness and the three other dogs sitting or lying around the base of the rock, it obviously wasn’t something new.
He made one of his grunt-yes noises as he bit into his sandwich.
“So, why organic dog treats?”
He lifted those broad, yummy shoulders—bad, Cara—but she pointed at him before he finished the motion. “No shrugging. You have to answer.”
“I said no chitchat.”
“It’s not chitchat. It’s an interrogation.”
He glared. Glowered. All frustrated irritation. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining him making that kind of look naked. If she did something sassy. And she would need to be punished.
Okay, if she were the blushing type, she’d be blushing.
“I was going to be a vet,” he grumbled, attacking his sandwich as if it had done something wrong. “But, you know, you need a steady hand.”
She had to try hard to not let the pity show on her face. It didn’t take a psychologist to figure Wes was not the kind of guy who would deal well with pity. Oh, but her heart did hurt for him. He obviously loved animals, and getting hurt had ended his chance to be a vet.
Geez, this guy was a sob story. Usually those made her run in the opposite direction. Hurt feelings and tough emotions were not her forte, but Wes made everything that usually freaked her out seem irresistible.
Well, you better do some resisting, Cara Pruitt.
“So, anyway, my mom had opened an organic grocery store in California and done pretty well, and it gave me the idea for organic pet food stuff. Did some research. Set up a business. Blah, blah, blah.”
“That’s pretty amazing. Starting your own business. I watched Mia do it, and she had a farm to start with. It’s really impressive you put together a whole business you can sustain yourself and a bunch of animals with.”
He stared into the creek. “It’s okay.”
“Right. Well, I’m impressed. I can’t even make myself go after a job I want, let alone start my own business.”
“What’s your excuse?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “Cave under pressure. Useless with expectation.” She nudged a few pebbles with her foot. “I’m working on it.”
“I would freaking hope so.”
There was an undercurrent in the way he mumbled it. Kind of mean. The meanest she’d ever heard him sound. Even meaner than when he’d yelled at that lady at the market. “Huh?”
“Sorry, no patience for that bullshit.” He stood, shoving his empty baggie and soda can in his pocket. He held a hand out for her trash, but she didn’t give it to him.
“What bullshit?”
“Not going after something you want because you’re afraid.” He made a “give me it” motion with his hand, which, for some reason, made her clutch the trash even tighter.
“I’m not afraid. That’s how I’m wired. Or whatever. I can’t handle it. I’ve tried.”
“You know what I have to say to that?”
“Something really nice and comforting?”
“Try harder.” With that, he let out a sharp whistle that had the dogs jumping to their feet and scrambling after his already retreating back.
Cara stared after him until he was a few feet away. Sweetness stood at the top of the hill, whining at her. Only then did she move.
