Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(21)

Julep assessed the pile of overripe cucumbers I had lying beside the basket of ripe ones, and with a curt nod, she clipped the stem of one that was ready to eat and dropped it into the basket.

I didn’t hate the view of watching her harvest, not when her ass stretched against those shorts, her cleavage coming into view each time she moved her arm to cut a new vegetable. I sat back on the bench, stretching my left arm over the back of it.

“Do you always bolt into your neighbors’ yard in your underwear?”

“It’s a sports bra and shorts,” she said flatly. “And I was poling.”

“This early?” I nodded, impressed. “Seems like I’m not the only one with a morning routine.”

She scoffed. “As if. I just couldn’t sleep.”

Something about the way she said that made me pause, made me watch her more closely. When I looked past the lean lines of her body that was entirely too distracting to focus on much else, I could see the bags under her eyes, the fatigue weighing down her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

Our drive home from the hospital popped into my mind, and I chewed the inside of my bottom lip a moment before asking, “Why don’t you have any friends?”

“Because I hurt my friends,” she said — matter-of-factly and as if there was no refuting that statement. “And because I don’t trust anyone.”

“Not even me?”

She snorted. “Especially not you.”

“What did I do?”

Julep leveled me with a look. “Other than disobey my father’s direct orders?”

Her words sobered me the way a cold shower after a night out would. It was easy to forget sometimes, how I couldn’t have her — especially with her dressed like that, looking at me like that, and actually fucking talking to me. Since my injury, it almost seemed like she cared about me… even though all previous signs pointed in the opposite direction of that notion.

I wished for some smartass remark but found myself silenced by the reminder of who she was, who her father was, and all the reasons I needed to stop giving in to my instincts that drove me toward her.

And so, we fell quiet, and I watched her finish off the rest of the cucumbers before she sat back on her heels and looked up at me.

“Anything else?”

I nodded to a couple holes I’d dug back around our fence. “Well, I was halfway into planting my peonies back there when this happened,” I said, lifting my right elbow a bit.

She gave me a warning glare when I did, as if even that movement would trigger my injury.

“But it’s okay. I can wait until next fall.”

“Why not plant them in the spring?”

I frowned. “Everyone knows peonies do better when they’re planted in the fall.”

“And by everyone you mean no one, right?”

“Well, anyone who knows anything about gardening,” I amended.

“It doesn’t make sense to plant them now. Everything will freeze in the winter.”

“Yes, but it’s not about this season. It’s about next season.”

Julep blinked at me. “You’re so weird.”

I just grinned.

I expected her to let it go, but instead, she waved for me to follow her over to my half-finished project. After she pulled on my gloves, I walked her through what was left, adding a bit of compost to the soil along with some bonemeal and then setting the roots so that the eyes of the peonies faced upward. I made sure she didn’t plant too deep, and once everything looked good, I instructed her to backfill the hole before we both gently used our feet to tamp down the soil.

“Jeez, you ran over here barefoot?”

“Did you just say jeez?” she shot back, ignoring my assessment.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Like I said, I was poling.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t run over here in heels, then.”

“I wish I had so I could take them off and gouge your eyes out with them, perv.”

I smirked. “You love my eyes on you.”

She paused where she was tenderly working the soil, eyes on her feet before they slowly crept up to mine. For a moment, she let me hold that weighted gaze, and I soaked up every second of it until she broke eye contact and stepped back, peeling my gardening gloves off each hand.

“What got you into pole?” I asked.

“My future dreams of being a stripper, of course.”

I honestly thought she was serious, and I nodded appreciatively. “That’s cool. Seems like a really difficult career. I feel like you need to have thick skin to do it, put up with the asshole clients and the club owners stealing your wages.”

Julep blinked at me. “You idiot, I was joking.”

“How am I supposed to know?! You have the same expression for everything.”

That earned me the tiniest smile, and she hooked a hand on her hip. “I’m actually kind of impressed with how you reacted to that. Most people don’t have any respect for dancers.”

“Oh, I have all the respect for dancers.”

Julep gave me a look. “Don’t ruin it.” When I zipped my lips closed, she shrugged, glancing back at her house across the street like she could see her pole from there. “It’s a long, stupid story. Let’s just say I was drowning, and pole was the life raft that kept my head above the waves.”