Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(21)

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Grayson clenched his teeth even tighter as Lori walked outside wearing her new boots and hat. God, she was cute...and so damned sexy he’d had a perpetual hard-on since the second she’d stepped out of her car that first day in her ridiculously revealing outfit and heels.

It didn’t help that he was still seeing red at the way she’d told him she would have climbed into a stranger’s car if he’d made good on his threat to drop her off on the road for talking too much. He couldn’t believe she would be that stupid, even if he’d been the one to make the equally stupid threat.

On top of everything else, it was hard to push down thirty-plus years of good manners and not get out from behind the wheel to open the door for her and help her up into the passenger seat. But he was very much afraid that if he did, he would rip the new hat from her head and chuck it into the street, because the last thing he needed was for her to become even more irresistible. Unfortunately, the way she looked in the cowboy boots and hat were threatening to rip what was left of his self-control to tatters.

Especially after he’d overheard her side of a conversation with a person he’d quickly guessed had to be her sister. Lori, he figured, had no idea just how well sound echoed throughout the General Store. Particularly when he was—stupidly—hanging on her every word.

Clearly, her sister was worried about her. And while Lori hadn’t given too much away to the other woman, she had made it clear that she was on his farm to get a break from her real life...and she had promised to head back to it in a “little while.”

The knowledge should have filled him with joy.

But it hadn’t.

For three years, solitude had been his companion and he’d convinced himself that all he’d ever need again were the blue sky, a thousand acres of pasture, and the crashing waves of the ocean. Until, from completely out of the blue, Lori Sullivan had barged into his life...and promptly blown his carefully emotionless world to shreds.

All of the facts, the truths that he couldn’t ignore, made him angry. With her. With himself. And especially with the whole damned world for dropping someone so irritating and irresistible and impossible to ignore at his feet.

As soon as the passenger door clicked shut and she’d buckled her seatbelt, he started the engine. She had a small bag on her lap and, a moment later, she pulled something out of it and held it out to him. “Want one?”

She was holding out something long and sticky and covered in sugar. It was fluorescent green and wasn’t even close to being edible.

“No.”

“Your loss.” She shoved it into her mouth instead and started chewing the candy.

And that was just the problem. He knew she was right. Because when she did finally decide to leave, it really was going to be his loss.

Somehow he needed to hold his focus on the farm, on the never-ending work that came with owning a thousand acres and more than a hundred animals. “Have you ever worked with crops before?” he asked her.

Around a mouthful of gummy candy, she said, “I used to help my mom with her veggies when I was a little girl. She said I had a green thumb. Why? Is planting seeds next on my list?”

“No,” he told her. “Weeding is.”

He figured she’d groan at that news. Instead, just as she kept doing over and over, she surprised him by saying, “Oh good. I enjoyed helping her plant things, and seeing them grow was cool, but I always liked ripping things out even more.”

He could see the wide grin on her face in his peripheral vision, which was as close as he could get to looking at her right then if he wanted to keep his control from being completely destroyed.

“It’s like the difference between a pirouette and a grand jeté. Both are fun, but sometimes you’ve just got more of an appetite for destruction.”

He’d spent enough years going to the ballet in his previous life to know what she was talking about. He shot a look at her gorgeous legs. Even in her dark jeans, her lithe strength was obvious, and the beautiful way she moved had caught his eye from the first.

Was that her story? Was she a dancer? And if she was, then what the hell was she doing on his farm pretending to be a farmhand when she should be up on a stage somewhere?

Thank God he pulled into his drive before he could do something stupid, like ask her any of those questions. Her questions for him during the ride over had been bad enough.

From here on out, he vowed to keep them loaded up with so much work that neither of them would have time to worry about anything else, starting with the weeds in his asparagus patch for her and the new roof on his cottage for him.

Chapter Nine

Damn it, Grayson thought the next morning as he rubbed down his horse after a particularly grueling ride, he’d all but worked the two of them into the ground the day before, but it hadn’t made a bit of difference.

He still wanted Lori more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. So much that even though she’d made him another fabulous dinner and then breakfast, both times he’d told her he couldn’t stop working long enough to eat with her and that he’d grab the leftovers when he could.

And later, when she’d said that she was worried about the cat not eating much, after he’d told her Mo was lucky to still be here at all, she’d glared at him and turned on her heel without another word.

“Grayson?” Lori poked her head into the stables. She’d been fearless everywhere else on his farm, but she never ventured too close to his horses. “You just got a call from Eric. He said he’s going to need to come an hour early tonight to pick up the boxes of food. What do you need me to do to help with that?”