IMAGINING THE PATCHOULI-WEARING GRANOLA eater with the Give Peas a Chance and Coexist bumper stickers, Liam raised his fist to knock on the door. It was a shame really, but he should have known when he found out about Sourwood Farm that it would be run by someone with a skewed view of reality. He just prayed they didn’t let their bias bleed over onto the veterans they were supposed to be serving. It was hard enough coming home after the things they’d seen. They didn’t need some kind of tree-hugging hipster spouting off nonsense about the wages of war.
Even the guy’s name bugged him. Andy. Like the kid in Toy Story. Dude probably had one of those man buns. And tribal tattoos. Nothing screamed overcompensating louder than a white guy with indigenous ink.
Before his hand hit the door, it opened, revealing a petite dark-haired woman with hazel eyes that shifted from green to gold and back again in the light. He’d bet money she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, but with her inky-dark lashes and the blush coloring her cheeks, she was so beautiful, he sucked in his breath and had to remind himself to let it out again. Hell, the man bun dude had spectacular taste. Andy was a lucky son of a bitch. Unless she was just visiting the farm. Please, let her just be visiting.
Not that he was interested. Despite the fact that the Southerlands—first his client and now his boss—seemed to run eyes wide-open toward true love, it wasn’t for him. He wasn’t a Southerland and the last thing he was interested in was some kind of fairy tale. He just hated to think of a woman like the one staring back at him wasted on the kind of guy who drove a bumper sticker-covered station wagon.
The woman looked at him like she was trying to work out whether he was dangerous or not. He should say something. Talking would be good. Words and shit.
“Can I help you?” she asked while he did his best mime impersonation.
Images of all the things she could help him with flooded his mind and he clenched his fist to fight the delicious onslaught. From the wary expression on her face, it didn’t look like that helped his effort to appear harmless.
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m here to see Jake Minton,” he said, deliberately relaxing his hand and aiming for what he hoped was a friendly smile and not a scary sneer. Christ, it wasn’t like him to get twisted up in front of a woman. “I’d like to talk to the owner, Andy, too, if he’s available.” May as well make sure the guy wasn’t doing anything to make things harder for Jake. He could tell from the email, his buddy was still wrestling demons. He sure as hell didn’t need someone feeding them. Or judging him for doing his duty, for doing things that others were unwilling or unable to do to keep the civilized world safe.
“I’m the owner,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Andy Stuart. It’s too soon to tell if it’s nice to meet you or not.”
Well, damn. That’s not at all how he expected this day to go. The pictures on the farm’s website had all been of the gardens and goats. It never occurred to him Andy might be a woman. He intended to keep that bit of misogyny all to himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking her offered hand and doing his damnedest to ignore for a moment how good her smaller hand felt in his. The calluses on her palm scraped against his, but juxtaposed against her decidedly feminine slender fingers, they only added to her appeal. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I’m Liam Rogers. Jake contacted me.”
He wanted to say something about how getting to know each other would be a pleasure—he’d make sure of it—but he still felt tongue-tied. His buddy Gabe would know exactly what to say to the beautiful chestnut-haired woman with the great curves and even better eyes. He’d find a way to turn it around so she was laughing and looking at him with interest instead of like he was something unpleasant left on her back porch.
There was no way in hell he’d admit it to anyone, but Liam had envied his friend a lot of things over the years: his easy life, his time in college chasing co-eds while he’d been hunting down extremists, his nightmare-free sleep. He’d never envied Gabe’s way with women—not really. His friend was a player, or had been until he met Berlin and she knocked him sideways.
But Liam never had trouble attracting female attention. The muscles and brooding demeanor were like catnip to women. Hell, even the scar bisecting his eyebrow seemed to help. Women built their own story about his tortured past without him having to say a thing. And then set about trying to heal him—usually with their lips. Which worked fine for a night or two and by then he was ready to move on. He could tell by looking at the woman pinning him with her too-perceptive gaze, none of the normal bullshit would work. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t interested in anything more than the occasional good time. Long-term relationships were filled with landmines, and he learned a long time ago to avoid them whenever possible.
“Don’t leave the nice man standing in the doorway all day.” An older woman with a face that appeared lined from years of smiling reached around Andy and grabbed his arm with her surprisingly strong grip.
She tugged on him, determined to get him into the room. He could have held steady, but her purpose matched his. He also didn’t mind the fact that it forced the younger woman to move and seemed to make her uncomfortable. He wasn’t about to look at why, but he liked the idea of throwing her off-balance.
“You come on in here. I’ve got zucchini bread and there’s a fresh pot of coffee,” she said, steering him to a chair at the head of the worn farm table. Despite her stooped form, the woman was a force of nature. He’d hate to pit himself against her. And he liked zucchini bread.
“Millie, he came to see Jake, not visit with us.” Andy hovered around, clearly not comfortable at the table with him. The other options, helping Millie with the coffee or standing in the middle of the room, didn’t seem to suit her any better.
“Don’t be silly. Everyone has time for a cup of coffee.” She set a big chunk of dark, moist bread in front of him, and he breathed in the warm, spicy scent. “Let him eat and then you can run him out to the back pasture. What do you take in your coffee, darling?”
Liam glanced up at the older woman and met her smile with his own. He didn’t normally like being mothered, but for people who were still hurting, he definitely got the appeal. And he could absolutely get used to the attention.
“Just black, please,” he said and watched her forehead crease in a scowl. She shook her head and went to fill a mug.
“What did I do wrong?” he asked when Andy circled closer to the table. He pushed out one of the chairs with his foot and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when she sat.
“Millie thinks if you don’t take milk in your coffee, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Well, you are,” said the older woman, setting a thick, white mug of black coffee in front of each of them. “Both of you.” The tone of her voice sounded like she was scolding them, but she couldn’t hide the crease of a smile curving her thin lips.
The older woman took a chair opposite and kept her gaze glued on him until he started to feel like one of those bugs stuck to the foam core at the Natural History Museum. He finally broke off a chunk of zucchini bread and popped it in his mouth so he’d have something to do with his hands. The sweet, spicy taste hit his tongue and he bit back a groan of pleasure. When he glanced back up, the older woman grinned at him, her smile turning her wrinkled cheeks into smooth round apples.
“You like it,” she said, telling him instead of asking. “Good. Finish up and Andy can run you back to meet your friend. Then both of you come back here for lunch.”
He didn’t even consider protesting. He doubted the old woman cared what he had to say and whatever she had on the stove smelled too good to pass up. Besides, he wanted a chance to get to know Andy better. He’d been planning on talking Jake into taking off to go fishing for a few days—maybe a couple of weeks if his friend needed it. It wouldn’t hurt him to slow down long enough to eat lunch.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, chasing the delicious bread with a swallow of coffee.
Either she’d eaten her slice earlier, or Andy was one of those women who thought they looked better when they tried to live on lettuce and air. He really hoped it was the former. Chronic dieters were exhausting. He’d much rather share a pizza and beer with a woman than have her watch him eat. And he liked them in almost every form they came in, from naturally skinny to generous curves. Although he had to admit, Andy’s lean muscled shape might be his favorite.
“Ready?” she asked, looking at him like he’d gone off the rails somewhere.
Pulling his mind back from a place it had no business going, he nodded and stood, stopping long enough to take his mug and plate to the kitchen sink.
“Lead on,” he said. “I’ll follow you.”
––––––––
ANDY HAD BEEN expecting a lot of things out of her day. A big blond Viking parked in her kitchen hadn’t been one of them. But once Millie got started, there was no use trying to stop her and Andy had known from the moment the older woman pointed Liam out they were in trouble. She was in trouble.
How the hell was she supposed to get him out to the back pasture where Jake was plowing? The guy was too big to prop himself on the four-wheeler’s running bar. He’d tip them over before they topped the slope. And the machinery was too fickle to let some guy she didn’t even know drive it. He’d break it and she’d be screwed—and not in the fun way. Not that she was thinking about that. She wasn’t.
It would take the better part of an hour for them to walk to Jake, which left her no choice but to drive him out there herself. He could sit behind her. There was plenty of room. She took Millie all the time. The older woman loved seeing the changes on the farm and despite her strength of will, her body wasn’t up to hiking across the acres of land anymore. Millie wasn’t as big as Liam, and it didn’t matter if her legs brushed Andy’s hips. It would matter with Liam. God, she really was in trouble.
Stomping down the porch steps to put some distance between her and the man while she could, she forced her attention away from the four-wheeler logistics and back to Jake. Maybe Liam would be able to help him find his way back. She’d been really worried about the young man with the haunted eyes. She’d forgive the big blond interloper a lot if he managed to help.
“How do you know Jake?” she asked, crossing the yard and heading to the shed. She was walking as fast as her legs would carry her. He was eating up the ground, matching her distance with a pace more like a Sunday stroll. It pissed her off.
“We served together. He was a newb on my last tour.”
She knew it. As soon as she saw the way he stalked across her yard, she’d have bet he was in the military. There was an economy of motion that rarely came from anything else. She nodded her understanding. He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t expect him to. She had a feeling Liam was used to playing things very close to the chest, which suited her fine. Oversharing was overrated. She ignored the irony for the moment. Jake’s case was different. He needed to talk to find his way back to civilization. She, on the other hand, didn’t need to share her story to know some things were better left buried in the past. She had a feeling Liam would agree.
She thought for a moment, weighing her words carefully. She didn’t know the man gaining on her but her gut said she could trust him—at least with this, and things with Jake were heading toward critical mass. If something didn’t change soon, she worried it would be too late. She paused with her hand on the shed door and he closed the distance between them.
“He could use a friend.” It wasn’t her place to tell the strange man that she knew Jake had been having more than the usual amount of trouble sleeping. The bunk house was small and even though she didn’t sleep there, she heard talk. She debated saying more, but she didn’t want to feel like she was betraying Jake’s trust. Not that he’d given it to her, but he never would if he felt like she talked about him to a stranger. She settled for something generic. “Coming back is harder for some people.”
The blond man scowled down at her, his gaze telegraphing no shit as clearly as if he’d rolled his icy-blue eyes.
“Lady, that’s an understatement.” He kept the darling and poor dumb thing silent but he didn’t have to say it out loud for her to hear it.
Arrogant jerk. She used to eat men like him for breakfast and move on to their competition for lunch. The familiar urge to take a chunk out of a know-it-all man reared its head, and she tamped it back down, shoving the feeling in a deep, dark hole before she gave in to its seductive lure. Power felt good. She didn’t need a lesson from a mansplainer to understand that. She needed to remember what it could cost. She glanced over his shoulder to the old farmhouse, standing strong and well-loved in the spot it held for over a hundred and fifty years. Shaking her head, she readjusted her priorities and turned away from the man and back to the shed.
She pushed open the door, careful to stop before it reached the end of the track. She hadn’t had a chance to replace the stop block and if the door rolled off the rails, it was a bitch to get it back on. The four-wheeler waiting in the dim light hadn’t magically grown overnight and her logistical problem moved itself to the forefront again.
Screw it. He could ride behind her like Millie did. She already decided she didn’t like him so what did it matter if his legs brushed hers? He should be the one who was uncomfortable. Not her. She climbed onto the geriatric machine, straddling the worn vinyl seat with a bravado she didn’t really feel. When she glanced up to motion for Liam to climb on, she found him watching her, and his expression shifted into something she couldn’t quite read.
“Jake called me,” he said, momentarily frozen. “That’s why I came.”
He was silhouetted in the open doorway, the sunlight outlining his big shape. The man was a freaking wall. His size alone ought to make him intimidating as hell, not to mention the badass demeanor. It suddenly occurred to her; she didn’t feel even a hint of trepidation around him. Not even the normal wariness that came from being around a man who was that much larger than her. Shoving the thought aside to consider later, she patted the seat behind her.
“I’m glad,” she said, feeling like he’d offered her some kind of olive branch and not sure exactly what it was. “I was hoping he’d reach out to someone. Climb on. I’ll take you to him.” Reaching up, she tightened her ponytail so her hair would stay in place while they rode. May as well eliminate the variables she could.
He tipped his head to the side, considering, but he only hesitated for a moment before coming to stand beside the four-wheeler. She scooted forward as far as she could on the slippery seat and tried to ignore the way the machine settled as he climbed on behind her. He was too big for them to ride without touching each other but at least he kept his hands off to the side. The only contact between them was his knees brushing the outside of her hips. It was still enough to make her want to get him to the back field and out of her hair as soon as possible.
“Hold on,” she said, turning the key and saying a silent prayer the temperamental machine would start without a fuss.
The engine choked and sputtered, but it caught. She pulled out of the shed a little faster than she intended and felt his knees squeeze her hips for a moment before shifting away again. She could do this. No big deal—just drive the Viking out to the field and leave him. Jake would bring him home when they were finished. Totally manageable.
She turned the four-wheeler onto the narrow path following the fence row and started across the two front fields still lying fallow under their cover of winter rye. They planted the grain to keep weeds down over the winter and turned it under in the spring to boost the nutrients in the soil. She’d have to remember to talk to Jake about turning the front field over when he finished what he was working on. She wanted to see about moving the goats onto the middle field for a few weeks first. She’d get Mike and Travis to rotate the pasture so the handful of goats they kept for milk could graze on the red clover before they moved the chickens in.
She got so caught up in playing out the scenarios in her head, she almost forgot about the blond giant sitting behind her. At least until she started up the bank and slid back on the seat, landing squarely against his chest. It was like hitting a wall of muscle and she heard him let out a grunt before his hands closed around her arms, steadying her. His thighs caged hers and he gripped her biceps, but despite the way he pinned her in place with his strength, his touch was surprisingly gentle.
“Okay?” he asked, his voice a warm murmur against her ear. She barely heard him over the noise from the engine and the air rushing past them. And the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears.
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t, but she would be as soon as she put some distance between them and stopped smelling the coffee and mint on his breath and the underlying scent of something richer. More masculine. And as soon as he stopped touching her, his warm, strong hands practically scorching her through the soft cotton of her hoodie. Using thigh muscles she didn’t know she possessed, she inched her way to the front of the seat and away from the warmth of his chest.
They crested the top of the hill and she slid the last few inches away from him, grateful for the distance, no matter how small. He let go of her arms as they started downhill, presumably to hold onto the bars on either side of the machine to avoid crushing her against the steering column. Andy quickly shoved aside thoughts of being pinned under Liam, his bulk pressing into her. There was no way on God’s green earth she was letting her mind continue in that direction. Not a chance.
She followed the path down the hill and along the edge of the field until they reached the place Jake was plowing. As soon as the tractor came into view, Andy squeezed a breath past her too-tight lungs. It felt a little like running a marathon and having the finish line finally come into view. Circling the four-wheeler in front of Jake, she watched, waiting until the tractor slowed.
“Here you go,” she said, coming to a stop and motioning with her hand for Liam to get off.
She waited just long enough for him to climb down and for the cab to the tractor to open before pulling away and putting as much distance between she and Liam as she could.