Oh no, had she left the gate open? One instruction—to make sure it latched securely—was the only thing she needed to follow. But had she done that?
He ran over to the big sow, hollering at her to get out of his strawberries, but the pig was too busy mowing down the neat and flourishing rows of fruit to look up in his direction. It was as if a rototiller had been driven over his strawberry plants, the very ones he’d been planning to load into boxes this week for his customers. It was a sweaty and difficult job corralling the sow, but ten minutes later he had her back where she belonged.
Lori was working with the hose, spraying down the pens, and clearly didn’t hear much above the sound of the water and her singing until he’d pushed the sow back into the pen.
When she finally caught sight of him, she was so surprised that she blasted him with the freezing cold water straight in the chest. The clear fury in his gaze had her quickly trying to turn it off, but her hands were muddy enough that it took her more than a few tries to finally get it. By then, Grayson wasn’t only pissed as hell, he was soaked, too.
“Sorry about that! You surprised me.” She looked down at herself, her clothes and skin liberally covered with mud. “If you want to turn the hose on me to make us even, that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
She reached out to hand him the hose and he batted it out of her hand so that it landed in the mud with a splat.
“I knew you were trouble when you drove like a maniac up my driveway.” He pointed to his obliterated strawberry crop. “I told you to shut the goddamned gate. Look at what happened because you can’t be trusted to do even one little thing right.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear how harsh he was being, but Lori didn’t even flinch.
Instead she came right back at him with, “I did shut it!” She moved across the muddy pen with surprising grace and reached behind him to shut the gate again with a frown. “I did it just like this.”
She slipped just enough in the mud for her hip to push the gate, and as she reached out to steady herself the latch began to wobble. She pushed a little harder and it came completely loose so that the gate popped open.
“See?” She turned to him, her beautiful face full of righteous indignation. “I told you I closed it.”
Feeling like a total ass, he waited for her to demand an apology from him. But she didn’t, which only made things worse. Probably because she didn’t think he was capable of making one.
And she was right. He couldn’t seem to find the words he should be saying to her. Instead, he told her, “I need something from the hardware store. Go wash up and I’ll take you into town to pick up some boots.”
“New shoes?”
Her eyes were wide with surprise and when he nodded, she smiled up at him. Even covered nearly head to toe in mud, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever been near.
Her smile grew even bigger as she told him, “You’re forgiven.”
And that was when Grayson realized he was sunk.
Because if he wasn’t really, really careful, Lori Sullivan was just going to keep stealing his heart one sentence, one meal, one smile at time.
“There’s an outdoor shower on the other side of the barn. Go use it.”
With that he turned his focus to fixing the gate of the pigpen...and not on what Lori must look like naked and soapy in the outdoor shower on the other side of the barn.
Chapter Eight
It was amazing what a hot shower and some soap could do for a person. Lori felt like a new woman in clean skinny black pants and a red shirt. Knowing they were actually going into town, she’d pulled her makeup bag out and swiped on some mascara, blush, and lip gloss. The only clean shoes she had left were heels, so she picked a red and black pair with three-inch heels, slung her purse over her arm, and headed back out the porch to see if Grayson was ready to go.
He took one look at her and his scowl deepened. She would have scowled back, but she guessed it would irritate him more if she smiled instead.
She might have forgiven him for being a total jerk out there with the pigs, but it still smarted that he’d immediately jumped to conclusions and treated her as if she were a few brain cells short of a full set and couldn’t even manage her way around the simplest thing. She’d gone to dance school in California, but she’d turned down several Ivy League schools to do it.
Without saying a word to her, he headed for his truck. She shot an evil grin at his broad back. The trip to the General Store from his farm took about fifteen minutes, and she figured a quarter hour was easily long enough to get a little revenge for the way he’d acted in the pigpen.
As they headed down his long drive, she let herself study his profile. His cowboy hat was pulled down over his slightly long, dark hair and with the dark stubble already growing back in across his tanned jaw, he looked more gorgeous than ever.
Not to mention extremely unhappy to be stuck with her as his passenger.
Facing him rather than the beautiful view of the sweeping green fields outside, she asked, “Were you related to the people you bought the farm from?”
His jaw tightened, but he must have realized he was well and truly trapped with her in his truck because he said, “No.”
“Did you own a different farm somewhere else before you got this one?”
“No.”
She was tempted to pull a piece of paper and pen out of her bag to keep track of how many words he answered with during the next fifteen minutes. So far, she’d have a grand total of two.
“But you grew up in Pescadero, right?”
“No.”
Didn’t he realize he was only making her more curious with his purposely terse—and very mysterious—answers?
“Where did you grow up, then?”
He scowled. “It’s a good four miles to either my farm or the General Store from here.” He looked at her shoes. “Gonna make your feet pretty damned sore to have to walk all that way in those ridiculous shoes if I dump you out right here.”
She shrugged as if the thought didn’t bother her in the least. “Someone’s bound to pick me up and give me a ride.”
“Lori.”
Her name was little more than an irritated growl from his throat. One that got her way too hot, considering that Grayson was the last guy on earth she should be interested in. He was so grumpy, and bossy, and domineering...and super, crazy, wicked hot.