Not only was he torn between wanting to strangle her and wanting to kiss her, but frankly, he wasn’t sure which was going to happen first.
Although when he finally walked back into his house and found Lori curled up on the couch sneezing her head off with Mo on her lap as she tried to coax her to “just take one more teeny-tiny bite of the super yummy liver,” anyone with half a brain would have placed their bets on kissing.
Which was why he immediately grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter and headed straight for the local bar to watch a game he wasn’t interested in and eat a burger that tasted like sawdust, making sure he didn’t return to the house until he could be sure Lori was asleep.
It was long past midnight when he finally headed up his driveway, and when he saw that her bedroom light was still on, he was suddenly hit with the crazy urge to rewind the past six hours—hell, the past several days—so that he could get things right with her this time.
Only, as soon as he got out of his truck, she turned off her bedroom light.
Chapter Ten
Grayson had obviously had breakfast by the time Lori woke up—a little late, due to the fact that she’d been waiting up to make sure he got home safe and sound after the way he’d barged out of the house the night before. She ate quickly, then went outside to feed the chickens and collect their eggs. When she was done, she headed into the pigpen.
“Hey, Chase,” she said to one of her favorite pigs. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
The pigs acted almost like puppies as they snuffled at her new boots and came for pats on the head. There were seven of them, so she’d decided to name them after her brothers and sister. And since Grayson was off somewhere doing secret farmer things that she’d likely have to pry out of him with a crowbar if she was interested enough, she talked to them the way she would have talked with her siblings.
“Pretty amazing how beautiful it is when the sun sets here, isn’t it?” she told the pig she’d named after her photographer brother. “Probably wish your hooves weren’t so dirty so you could pick up a camera and capture it, don’t you?” She could have sworn the pig nodded.
She was refilling the water troughs as the fastest pig raced over for a drink, reminding her of her car-racing brother Zach. “There was the most beautiful classic Ford truck on Main Street yesterday. Wouldn’t it be great to go zipping down the farm road in the middle of the night, under a full moon, pedal to the metal?” Just as her brother Zach would have, he ignored her and kept on drinking.
She grinned as she picked up the bag of feed and the oldest pig of the bunch kept a watchful eye on her, letting the younger ones feed first. “You’re definitely Marcus,” she said, her heart tugging hard as she thought about how much her oldest brother, who owned a winery in Napa Valley, would love the rolling hills of Pescadero. “Maybe you should give some thought to convincing Grayson to put in some grapes out here, too.” The pig simply kept a calm watch over the rest of his motley crew.
Talking to the pigs like this didn’t make her miss her family any less, but it kept her smiling. And she knew that was the most important thing right now. Especially when the only actual person she had to talk to was little better than working and living with a ghost.
She didn’t know how he did it—how he managed to be so big and yet so silent, so domineering and yet invisible, all at the same time. In some ways, Grayson reminded her of her twin sister Sophie. Soph could slip in and out of a room and notice absolutely everything in it without anyone being the wiser.
Lori had always loved helping Marcus out with his vineyard in Napa, but even so, she was surprised by how much she liked working on a farm, with the exception of cleaning bathrooms. She’d enjoyed using the riding lawnmower that morning, and had loved the thrill of having all that power between her legs. She also really liked having her hands in the rich soil as she weeded the garden, and the pigs and chickens had become like a second family to her by now.
She had just finished mucking out the mama pig’s stall and was giving her boots a gentle hose-down when Grayson suddenly walked out of the stables. “I just heard from the neighbor to the west of here that one of my fences is down and the cows are grazing on his land. We need to get over there immediately to fix it. I’ve saddled Rosie for you.”
Lori knew she could be stubborn and full of pride. Impulsive, too. But she wasn’t stupid. Which was why she had no problem at all admitting, “I don’t know how to ride a horse. Can’t we get out to the fence another way?”
“Not without the sound of the motor driving even more cows into the neighbor’s field.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, then, why don’t you give me a quick riding lesson?”
“We don’t have time for a lesson.”
He looked as frustrated as she felt. She knew they were nothing more than employer and farmhand, but oh, how she wished he’d talk to her, look at her, for some other reason than because of a fence or a dirty house that needed cleaning or because she’d just screwed something up.
She wished even more that she could just stop wishing, already.
Finally, he informed her, “You’re going to have to ride with me.” He looked none too happy about it.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, not happy about it either. Considering the way her body instantly heated up even from two dozen feet away, she knew that his avoiding her had been a good idea...and that riding on a horse together was an equally bad one.
She couldn’t get on a horse with Grayson, couldn’t be that close to all his marvelously big, hard muscles. Especially when he was looking even more brooding, mysterious, and super-crazy-sexy today in his jeans and work shirt and cowboy hat and boots.
“More of my cows could get out if we take much longer and it looks like there’s a storm coming in. Go put on a coat.”
As he went back into the stable to bring his horse outside, she looked up at the sky, at the puffy white clouds in the bright blue. There was a light breeze, but the sun was warm and she didn’t believe there was even the slightest chance of a storm in the near future. No, she suspected he was simply trying to make her cover up so that he could pretend she wasn’t a woman while they bumped and slid and rocked against each other in the saddle.
He gave her one of his finely tuned irritated looks when he came back out and saw that she was still just wearing her thin T-shirt. She shot him one right back.