Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(15)

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She asked too many questions, damn it. Worse than that, though, was that despite himself, Grayson wanted to ask her just as many. Where had she come from? What did she do for a living when she wasn’t trying to masquerade as a farmhand? And how the hell was she able to make the best damned breakfast he’d ever eaten...so good that he’d almost embarrassed himself when he’d started eating it?

“Do you want to hear about my last farmhand?”

She looked a little wary at the unexpected question. “Something tells me this is a trick question. But if you’re finally feeling all chatty, go ahead.”

No question about it, she wasn’t just pretty, she was smart, too. And sassy as hell, despite the pithy one-word answers he’d growled at her throughout breakfast.

“He was twenty-two, young enough and strong enough to work circles around me. He couldn’t cook, but he could chop wood, herd cows, shear sheep, bale hay, harvest the crops, and do construction. But his best quality was that he didn’t speak. At all. He just grunted when he was hungry or needed help with something.”

Lori blinked up at him with wide eyes, at least a thousand times too pretty for his peace of mind this morning. He hadn’t been able to sleep just a wall away from her and had finally given up and gone outside to chop firewood.

Good. Maybe he’d finally gotten through to her. If she wanted to stick around for much longer, she needed to zip it.

“Wow,” she said in a tone that had him being the wary one this time, “I don’t think you’ve said that many words in total to me since yesterday.”

He turned and started to wash his plate off with hard strokes of the sponge over the porcelain, a string of curse words playing out in his head. He’d been trying to make a point—quite a clear point, he thought. He wasn’t interested in conversation, just in getting the work done.

“Hey, that’s my job.” She shoved in beside him at the sink. “Scoot.”

He could wash his own dishes, damn it, but when he felt her hip bump against his to gently push him out of the way, he dropped his plate so fast to put distance between them that he practically shattered it on the bottom of the sink.

Just touching her hand last night when she’d cut her finger had been too much. Knowing anything at all about the feel of her hips—that they were toned, yet with a woman’s softness—was miles beyond anything his self-control could deal with.

“Let me make sure I understood what you just said,” she offered as she started deftly washing off the plates, her hands looking too elegant to be so efficient. “You don’t like to talk to or interact with people. And I love both those things, which you find annoying.” She shot him a glance. “Do I have that right so far?” When he just stood there and stared at her, she said, “Do you also agree that it’s doubtful that either of us is going to change anytime soon?” At his continued silence, she said, “No, don’t bother using up one of your precious words. I already know the answers.”

This was it. This was where she was finally going to accept that she needed to leave so he could get a real farmhand. Grayson was sure the relief was going to come any second now. After all, hadn’t that been what he’d been wishing for since the first moment he’d set eyes on her—for her to go?

He had to work like hell to ignore the voice in his head that told him he’d been wishing for a hell of a lot more than that...and that most of his wishes had Lori naked and reaching for him.

“It seems to me,” she said in a considering tone as she turned off the faucet and began wiping the plates dry with a clean dish towel, “that we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” The sunny smile she followed that inane statement with nearly knocked his feet out from under him, giving her enough time to quickly segue into, “So now that I’m almost done washing up, what do you want me to work on first?”

He’d never been a big talker, but that wasn’t why he didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t believe anyone could be this stubborn. Delusional was another good word for it.

Why wasn’t she packing up her things and leaving already? Under any other circumstances, he would have done it for her, but the memory of the way she’d cried in her bed last night was still too fresh in his head.

Somehow he needed to find something for her to do that she couldn’t screw up. Even better, something that would convince her she was not meant for the farming life. Toilet brushes and chickens hadn’t daunted her...so what would?

His lips almost moved up into a smile as he hit on it. “Pigs.”

She couldn’t hide her immediate look of horror. “You have pigs?”

He couldn’t believe how difficult it was to keep the grin off his face. There hadn’t been much cause for smiling these past few years, not until an irritatingly beautiful stranger had shown up and declared herself his new farmhand. Fortunately, he would have bet his farm that she was going to hate dealing with the pigs, with all their mud and mess—and their surprising intelligence.

“They need fresh water and feed.”

“That doesn’t sound so hard.”

It wasn’t, unless the pigs were feeling frisky and the mud was fresh. Maybe it wasn’t fair to have her work in their outdoor enclosure rather than the indoor pig house with the cement floor, but after the rain they’d had a couple of days ago it did need to be cleaned up. “That’s why I’m letting you do it,” he pointed out.