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“Thanks,” she mumbled, following him out of the barn and back up the well-worn footpath that led to the house.
She didn’t really know what to expect when they got to the front porch. If he would stop at the door or assume he was joining her for dinner.
When he opened the door and held it for her, she assumed he would be taking his leave. But then he came inside behind her, his heavy footsteps making that first floorboard squeak. It made her feel conscious of how long it had been since she’d spent any meaningful time in the house with someone else. That second squeak upon entry.
It made her feel unaccountably lonely. Sad.
She didn’t know why a squeaky floorboard had the power to do that.
Alex walked across the kitchen and opened a few cabinets, his movements confident even though he clearly didn’t know where anything was. His gestures were broad, firm. When he took the bowls out of the cabinet and set them down on the counter, he didn’t do it tentatively.
It was funny because she had watched Asher make her drink this morning and yet again she had thought of his movements as elegant. There was nothing elegant about Alex’s movements. They were like the rest of him. Rough, masculine. Somehow lethal-looking.
She had imagined that when Asher put his hands on her skin, if he ever touched her hand, he would apply that same fine elegance to his actions. If Alex ever touched her, with all that hard-packed muscle, and those work-roughened hands, he might break her.
Why are you comparing them?
A good question. Probably because she had such limited interaction with men. And these particular two men were as opposite as they came.
Anyway, Alex didn’t fare well in the comparison. And she ignored the strange tightness in her lungs that accompanied that thought.
She didn’t want to be broken. She was broken enough.
He opened the Crock-Pot, and ladled a couple big scoops of stew into one of the bowls. “Come get it,” he said, pushing the bowl away from him slightly, before picking up the second one to serve himself.
Her throat tightened. Almost closed completely. She opened the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, then retrieved the bowl. “Thank you.”
“Sure.”
He got his own spoon, then took two cans of Coke out of the fridge, sliding one over to her before he popped the top on his own and took a seat.
That was two times he had served her first. It shouldn’t matter.
But she noticed.
She pressed her spoon down into the thick stew and tilted it sideways, grimacing when she unveiled an onion. She carefully shunted it off to the side and scooped a chunk of meat onto her spoon.
“I’m thinking it’ll probably take about two weeks to get the facility prepared to bring in animals,” Alex said, taking what appeared to be a very reckless bite of stew as far as she was concerned.
“Two weeks? That’s it?”
“Should be about that long.”
“That’s not much time for me to prepare for big stinky animals to be on my property,” she said, flicking another onion off to the side before she took another bite.
“Well, there are already stinging animals on your property, so why not?”
She shrugged, then took another bite of stew, grimacing when she bit into a carrot that clearly had a hidden onion welded to the back of it. She looked around and cursed the lack of napkin.
She decided she wasn’t going to try to muscle past it out of politeness. It wasn’t like Alex himself made the stew.
Clara stood and took two quick strides to the sink, leaning in deep before she spit the carrot and onion down the drain. She turned the sink on, then the disposal and tried to ignore the fact that she knew Alex was watching her.
She straightened, brushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t like onions.”
She walked stiffly back to her seat and sat down, making a point to be a little more careful with the dissection of the stew from that point on.
“And you don’t like coffee,” he noted.
She furrowed her brow. “I like coffee.”
“You don’t.”
Clara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know my life.”
“You don’t like coffee, you don’t like onions. You do like SpaghettiOs and apparently prefer Coke to beer.”
“Beer is gross,” she countered.
“Right, but SpaghettiOs are fine dining.” He shook his head. “Okay. You don’t like beer. What else don’t you like?”
“The list of what I like is shorter and takes less time,” she said.
“Okay. What do you like? Because if I’m going to bring you food sometimes, it would be nice if you didn’t have to tiptoe through your dinner like it was full of land mines.”
She sniffed. “Nobody said you had to bring me food. But if you must know, I like pasta as long as there are no onions. Or excess greens.”
“Hamburgers?”
She nodded. “Without lettuce.”
“What are your thoughts on kale?”
She frowned. “What are your thoughts on evil?”
“Chard?”
“Satan’s preferred salad fixing.”
“Do you like any kind of lettuce?”
She scowled. Then she realized that she was doing a very good impression of a cranky child. But, oh well, she didn’t like feeling she had to give an account of the things she enjoyed eating. No one had cared if she ate her vegetables for a long damn time.
“A salad with iceberg lettuce is fine,” she explained. “As long as it has cheese. And a lot of dressing. Good dressing, though. And not blue cheese.”
“I think I’m getting the picture. Pretty sure I can work with these instructions.”
“Pizza is good,” she said.
“Obviously. But pizza without beer?” She stared back at him blankly and he sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to stock my own, aren’t I?”
“Alternately, you could let me handle feeding myself, which I have done pretty successfully for the past ten years.”
“I think you and I might have different definitions of the word successful.”
She rolled her eyes and took an ostentatious sip of her Coke. “I didn’t ask for your definition of anything.”
“I’m going to get you eating less canned pasta.”
She squinted at him. “You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.”
A smile shifted his handsome features, the expression as affecting as it was infuriating. “Lasagna?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Acceptable.”
“As long as there are no onions.”
“Obviously.”
“Save your canned food for an emergency. I’ll bring dinner tomorrow too.”
She rolled her eyes but continued eating in silence, putting her focus on making sure she didn’t get an undesirable bite again.
“What time do you get off tomorrow?” he asked.
The question jarred her focus away from her stew. “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be here all day.”
“Okay. Then I’ll come in the morning, and maybe you can show me around the ranch. Show me the bee suit.”
She sighed grumpily. “I have a feeling the bee suit is only going to underwhelm you at this point.”
He lifted a shoulder, pushing himself into a standing position and bringing his Coke can to his lips. He knocked it back, finishing off the drink. “I think I can deal with it. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Okay. Tomorrow.”
She stayed sitting at the table while Alex walked out the door. And she tried to ignore the inexplicable feeling of pressure in her chest.
It was nice to have somebody take care of her like this. But it wasn’t something she intended to get used to.
If there was one thing that life had taught her at this point, it was that people didn’t stay forever. And the increased attention you got after you lost someone didn’t last.
Heck, there was a stipulation in the will that made it clear it wouldn’t last.
She swallowed around the prickly feeling in her throat, then picked up her bowl of stew. She wrinkled her nose and dumped the remaining contents back into the Crock-Pot. Then she took a can of SpaghettiOs out of one of the cabinets and set about fixing herself some dinner.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ub52b326e-27c8-53a8-9ff6-3bb8e53b0c8c)
WHEN ALEX PULLED UP to Clara’s farmhouse—his farmhouse, technically—the next morning, he did not expect to see Clara standing on the front porch.
But there she was, blond hair fashioned into a long braid that was slung over her shoulder, a blue speckled mug in her hand. She was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that he thought might be too tight for doing effective outdoor work in. But they did a damn fine job of showing off her long, shapely legs.
Who knew that Clara Campbell had the kind of thighs a man wanted to lick? Get his face between. Get his body between.
You can stop that right now. She’s Jason’s sister, not some woman you want to pick up at a bar.
That thought shamed him, because the real issue was he was too used to thinking of women as a collection of beautiful body parts he might want to touch. Not that he didn’t care about the woman herself, he did. It was just that he didn’t have relationships.
Which meant that the shape of a woman’s thighs and the size of her breasts became essentially the sum total of his requirements. It made it too easy to look at a body first, and think about who she was second.
Which was why he had thought of Clara’s thighs that way. Not because he was attracted to her specifically. Because he was attracted to women.
He had seen Clara a handful of times when she’d been a kid, but not much since. And that meant it was difficult to reconcile the woman he was dealing with in the present with the child he remembered from the past.
The woman she was now...
He found her way too attractive, and that was just wrong.
He gritted his teeth and put the truck in Park, killing the engine and getting out. He might have slammed the door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It rattled the whole truck, and he hoped it would rattle some damn sense into his brain.
“Good morning,” he said, finding that smile of his easily.
Never let them see you sweat. Not when they were pointing a gun at your face. Not when they were saying you should’ve never been born. Never.
It was something Liam had always told him. In fact, it was the last thing his older brother had told him before he’d left home at eighteen.
Keep your smile, Alex. Even if it’s just to say screw ’em. Keep your smile.
She made a huffing sound. “Is it?”
He looked around, looked up at the unseasonably clear sky, the brilliant green of the pine trees that closed in around them, then he took a deep breath. “The sun is shining and we’re still standing. Constitutes a good morning as far as I’m concerned.”
“Well, seeing as it’s my day off, my requirements for a good morning centered around a cozy blanket and a soft mattress.”
He was suddenly overtaken by the strangest, strongest desire. To see her sleep. Her face neutral, peaceful even. That pale blond hair spread over her face, her dark lashes fanned out over her cheeks.
He strode toward her, reached out and took the travel mug out of her hand. “For me?”
Before she could answer, he took a long sip of the hot beverage. Then he grimaced. “What the hell is that?” he asked as the sickly sweet, borderline syrupy concoction slid down his throat.
It was her turn to grin. “Hot chocolate.”
“That’s not hot chocolate. That’s a cup of hot sugar.”
“It’s four packets and a handful of marshmallows.”
He handed the mug back to her. “That’s disgusting, Clara.”
She sniffed and treated him to a very haughty look. “I assume you were hoping for coffee? Because I think that’s disgusting.”
