“Please, Soph,” Lori begged, “I just need a little while longer.”
“Okay,” her sister agreed, “but you’ve got to make me a promise back.”
“What is it?” Lori asked warily.
“If you start to feel like you’re really in trouble, promise you’ll call me and let me come take you home.”
“I promise.”
“And—”
“Wait,” Lori said, cutting her off, “you already got your promise.”
“Well, I need one more,” Sophie said, just as stubborn as she was, twins both inside and out. “You’ve got to promise me you’ll come to Sunday lunch with everyone in a week and a half.”
Lori clenched the phone. “Soph, I—”
“You had already planned to take a short trip back from Chicago for the weekend to see everyone,” Sophie reminded her. “Promise me, Lori, or the deal’s off.”
God, she hated being forced against the wall by anyone or anything. And maybe if it were anyone but her sister doing it to her, she would have fought her on it. But how could she when she knew she’d be saying the exact same thing to Sophie if their situations were reversed, simply because she loved her?
“Fine,” she grudgingly agreed. “I’ll make sure I don’t miss our big family lunch in a week and a half.” Knowing it was long past time to get her bloodhound of a sister off her case, Lori quickly asked, “Have you heard anything from Megan and Gabe?”
“Megan hasn’t admitted to being pregnant yet,” Sophie told her, “but when I met her for lunch, she got a little green when the guy next to us had the egg salad. Gabe is going to be such a great dad, isn’t he?”
“Our brother is going to be an amazing father,” Lori agreed. Gabe was a firefighter who had met his future wife and eight-year-old daughter when he saved them from a horrible apartment fire a year ago. “Just like you’re a totally amazing mom. Summer is going to be so excited when they finally ‘fess up and tell her she’s going to be a big sister. And Jackie and Smith Jr. will have another cousin to play with.” Suddenly, Lori saw Grayson coming toward her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Back to the farm?” Sophie asked with more than a little incredulity.
“Yes,” Lori confirmed again. “Back to the farm.”
“You’d better call me every day with an update on how you’re doing,” her sister warned her, “because I’m going to worry every second until I hear from you again, and if I don’t know you’re okay, I’m going to have to come after you, whether you want me there on that farm with you or not.”
Everyone thought Sophie was so quiet, so sedate, but Lori knew better than anyone apart from Sophie’s husband just what a powerful force her sister could be. Especially if she thought someone she loved was in trouble.
“Kiss the twins’ cute little faces for me and tell them Aunt Lori misses them and is going to play tickle monster with them soon.”
She hung up her phone and slid it back into her bag just as Grayson rounded the corner and came into full view again. She picked up a pair of red and black boots.
“What do you think of these? Aren’t they cute?”
Instead of answering, he just stared at her, that muscle in his jaw jumping as he took in her new hat. On a deep glower, his gaze finally dropped to the boots she was holding up.
“They’ll do the job,” he said with no appreciation whatsoever for the absolutely gorgeous flame design running up both sides of the cowboy boots. “I’ll be waiting for you in the truck.”
So much for the momentary truce it had seemed they’d come to in his truck on the drive over. Just as she’d predicted, it hadn’t lasted long.
* * *
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.