Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(67)

Her gaze flicked to his chest, then back up to his eyes.

Jas beamed at her, sensing nothing amiss. “Come with me.”

She checked her watch. “It’s almost three. I have to check in on the pizza dough if we want it ready in time for dinner.”

“I’ll help you with that later. There’s something I want to show you. Grab your sweater.”

“It’s warm out today, though.”

“Trust me, grab it.”

She arched an eyebrow at him but complied, pulling her big comfy sweater from the hall closet before returning to the door.

He stopped before they rounded the house. “Close your eyes.”

She gave him a quizzical look, but shut them. “This better not be a prank of some kind,” she warned. “I don’t want to stick my hand into something gross.”

“No prank. Who would ever prank you like that?” He took hold of her arm and led her about a dozen steps. “Okay, look.”

She opened her eyes. “Oh.”

“Well?”

She walked forward a few feet and stopped. “It’s, um . . . hay?” She ended it with a question, because she had honestly only ever seen hay in movies. But this looked like the movie hay, tightly bundled in small bales. Piles upon piles of hay.

“You said you wanted a snowball fight. Well, I tried to get a snow machine, but I guess it’s not cold enough for fake snow and also we’re not a ski resort.”

“So you got . . . hay?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know it’s not the same as snow, but I figured it was really the only thing you can bunch up and toss at someone. And not injure them. So . . .” He spread his arms wide. “I thought, why not a hay fight?”

Oh my. If she could see what her heart looked like right now, she imagined it would be aglow, throbbing in her chest. “You went through all this trouble because I said I wanted a snowball fight?” She gazed at the brown straw that was piled everywhere, overwhelmed.

Engineering a hay fight was one of the weirdest and nicest things anyone had ever done for her.

“It wasn’t trouble. I had to call my brother to ask if he had a lot of hay.”

A phone call wasn’t too bad.

“He’s running low. So I had to find out where to get the hay, go to the big house, get a truck, go pick up the hay, and then . . . do that like three more times to have enough hay. Not that big of a deal.”

“Right, that sounds like not a big deal at all.”

He didn’t seem to pick up on her dry humor, because he shrugged. “Nope.”

She leaned over and touched the hay in the bale closest to her. It was scratchy and dry, and would be hell on her delicate skin.

The idea of this was so sweet and also something she had no interest in doing. “Um, Jas—” She yelped when something wet hit her shoulder and exploded. Outraged and confused, she whipped her head around to glare at him.

His delighted grin took her breath away. He tossed a bright red water balloon in his hand, and that was when she noticed the pail at his feet. The pail filled with more water balloons. “Unfortunately, after I paid for all that hay and got it all here, I realized no one actually wants hay thrown at them. And there’s this thing called farmer’s lung?”

She wrung out the chunk of her hair that had gotten wet. “Sounds like something we don’t want to contract.”

“Right. So I figured it would have to be a water fight. Water is closer to snow, anyway.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, her outrage turning to amusement. “This isn’t fair! I don’t have any ammunition.”

“I’d never water fight an unarmed woman.” He nodded at a hay bale. “Right behind there.”

She darted around the bale and crouched down, finding her full pail right where he’d indicated. She grabbed a balloon, poked her head over her hay barricade, then retreated when a water balloon sailed at her head. “What are you going to do with all this hay now that it’s useless?” As quietly as possible, she lifted two water balloons, one in each hand, and waited for him to speak.

“Hay is never useless. My brother and grandpa will be confused and delighted by my gift to the farm.”

Using his voice as her guide, she launched to her feet and fired two balloons rapid-fire. Her brain processed every action in slow motion—the windup, the release, the trajectory of the balloons as they launched through the air, landing and bursting against his face and chest.

A helpless giggle escaped her at his disgruntled expression. He wiped the water out of his eyes. “You’ll pay for that.”

“I’d like to see you try.” She squealed and ducked when he tossed a balloon at her. They darted around and behind the hay and the air filled with their laughter and curses. Most of her shots missed. A good number of his landed. “Unfair, you’re a trained soldier and guard. You have better hand-eye coordination,” she puffed from behind cover.

“All’s fair.”

In love.

She reached into her pail and made a sound of dismay when she discovered she only had two balloons left.

She said a quick prayer and launched to her feet, hands full, and ran away from the makeshift obstacle course.

A balloon hit the back of her leg, and she sped up.

“Why are you zigzagging?” he called out as he chased her, and the asshole didn’t sound out of breath at all.