Rein In (Willow Bay Stables #3)(20)

“Oh?” She seemed surprised, and I could see from the corner of my eye that she had her hair down today. “For what?” she asked him.

“We have an order ready at Westwood Feed and Tack but they don’t have time to drop it off until Monday, and we’re going to need it this weekend.” Grant spoke to her differently than he did any of the other volunteers. It was obvious to anyone who cared to notice that she was special to him. “I need you to take the one-ton into town and pick it up.”

“Okay,” she returned her answer to him with a smile.

He was special to her, too.

“Take Rhys and one of the other guys with you. It’ll be a heavy load,” Grant advised.

“I’ll go,” Fun Bobby offered before Grant was barely done with his sentence.

“Damn it,” Glitch pouted and kicked his shoe around in the gravel like a child.

Fun Bobby ruffled Glitch’s hair and pinched his cheeks before Glitch swatted him away. “Too slow, gorgeous. Maybe next time.”

Her eyes were on me while the two of them argued.

I could feel them in the way my heart became unsteady, ready to flee for the shadows. Just as desperate as they were eager to hide from the sun was I eager to hide from her.

There were years when I should have grown into a man, eight years to be exact. Life should have molded me into a man who ran head first into a woman like that, but instead, a lack of living left me as a boy tripping over stones to get away from her.

“I’ll get the truck and meet you guys around front.” She spoke in my direction, and I nodded without fully looking at her.

“Sounds good.” Fun Bobby put some distance between himself and a moody Glitch.

I felt light-headed, the way you did after hours in the sun without water. I was parched, though I’d just drank a gallon, and only resumed breathing when I felt the burn on my skin from her eyes lessen to a dull throb as she walked away.

“You cause her any trouble, I’ll bury the both of you out back.” Grant pointed his screwdriver at the two of us. “Understood?”

I nodded.

“Ten-four, bossman.” Fun Bobby saluted him.

We waited for only about five minutes before a white one-ton Ford with the black Equine for Hearts emblem on the door rolled to a stop in front of the office.

Fun Bobby jogged up to the window on the driver’s side and leaned in. “Is it cool if I drive?” he asked.

“Sure,” she agreed.

It was only a two-door truck, and a two-door truck meant a bench seat. My heart practically whined as I jerked open the passenger door to see her sliding into the middle seat.

She smiled at me and my mind assaulted me with flashbacks of her lips on mine. Vanilla, she’d tasted like vanilla.

“You comin’?”

I blinked, looking further into the cab of the truck to see that Fun Bobby was already behind the wheel, and they were both waiting on me.

Folding into the passenger seat, I exhausted myself trying to keep from touching her body with mine but it was futile. The cab would have been small for three average-sized people, but Fun Bobby was a tank and my legs were too long to find a place to hide.

In the fraction of a second that I relaxed my muscles, I felt the heat of her thigh through a rip in the side my jeans.

My lungs ceased to contract and my brain without oxygen grew dizzy.

Glancing over at Fun Bobby, careful not to look at her, I watched for signs that she affected him in any way. That perhaps this was just how men felt around pretty women.

It wasn’t.

Fun Bobby bounced his head along to some rap music that came from the stereo, and he never even looked at her.

It was just me.

It was just me who felt like the air had gotten thicker in the cab even though the windows were down.

My pulse throbbed in my temple. So loud that I couldn’t make out any of the words from the song. The muscles in the left side of my body contracted and released like they were readying themselves for outright chaos.

Her light so close to me ravaged the dark, and my demons screamed as they fled.

It was painful, a physical agony by way on the soul.

I prayed to every God I could imagine that she wouldn’t speak. If she spoke, being this close to me, it might cause a dam in me to break.

The time it took to reach where we were going felt like an eternity. Before the truck had fully rolled to stop, I threw myself out the passenger door and fed on fresh air like a starved man.

Her proximity made it hard to breath, and without breath, I was robbed of sanity.

I wasn’t sure I knew what defined normal in the broad scope of the word, but this couldn’t be normal.

My reaction to her was a kaleidoscope of feeling. I could barely see fit enough to put one foot in front of the other.

Fun Bobby took the invoice into the store, and Aurora watched me carefully as she climbed down from the truck.

It wasn’t the way people watched a circus freak out of morbid curiosity and fascination. She watched me the way a child watched fireworks for the first time, with excitement and adoration and not the slightest bit of fear.

“Are you okay?” She circled me.

I nodded and as we faced each other, she began walking backward as though not to break eye contact.

“I know you can talk.” She tilted her head to the side, and her eyes dropped to where my hands were fisted at my sides.