Chapter Six
Pretty much the only thing that could have wiped the image of Pippa’s crestfallen expression from his mind was the sound of Mabry’s voice wheezing in pain. Somehow, both things were still stuck in his head fifteen minutes later when he pulled back into Mabry’s long driveway. There was only a footpath plowed from house to barn, so Seth drove as far as he could go and killed the engine. “Go into the house and get as many clean towels as you can find and meet me in the barn,” he told Pippa, who had slipped down from the truck by the time he was out and around the front. What he hadn’t told Pippa was that Mabry was pretty sure the tractor had broken a few bones, though he hadn’t said where or how badly, so Seth had no idea what they were about to encounter.
Pippa didn’t question him, just nodded and ran toward the screened-in back porch, phone still at her ear.
“Keep talking to him,” Seth called over his shoulder as he took off down the mud- and snow-packed path to the barn. He could hear the first strains of sirens whining in the distance. Thank God. He was one of the fortunate few who, despite having seen more than his fair share of combat, had managed to find a way to make peace with his memories so they didn’t haunt his every waking or sleeping hour any longer. However, he’d be a liar if he said the sound of those sirens, mixing with the drumbeat of his own pulse, didn’t rouse a few long-buried memories he’d just as soon leave in the past. He tried not to flinch when he heard the screen door to the back porch slap shut a minute later—failed, but kept on running.
“I’ve got towels,” Pippa shouted hoarsely from far behind him, and he flinched again.
He wanted to turn, tell her not to yell like that, to protect her voice, then shook his head and kept on moving. Not my problem. But he was coming to believe it was still a problem for her. Something wasn’t quite adding up with her tidy little story about being all healed and just looking for a little downtime. A continent away. Also, not my problem. Her animated expression as she exclaimed how beautiful the countryside was, excitedly telling him how she was planning to earn her keep at the vineyard, mixed with the sound of Mabry telling him to take care of her when they’d left the house earlier. I am taking care of her. And myself. The only way I know how.
Seth made it to the barn, where the sight of the old man, pinned under the side of the tractor, mercifully wiped his mind clean of everything except for the scene in front of him. “Hey, Mabry,” he said, panting a little as he pulled up, then knelt beside the man’s head. He took Mabry’s phone from his shaking hand. “I’ve got him, Pippa,” he said, and hung up, knowing she’d be in the barn in a few seconds anyway. He dropped the phone in the dirt and turned his attention to the old man. Mabry was pale as a ghost and looked as if he’d aged another ten years since they’d seen him less than a half hour ago. “If you wanted to do some weight lifting, I have a set in my basement, you know,” Seth told him, keeping his tone light as he quickly assessed the situation.
It looked like Mabry had been working on the axle, or maybe trying to take the wheel off—it was hard to tell—but whatever the case, the jack system he’d rigged up had failed. One side of the tractor had dropped down, pinning the lower half of his body under part of its weight and probably fracturing one or both of his legs. Mabry had said it might have “banged his legs up a bit,” and he wasn’t kidding. More worrisome, a piece of the jack had impaled Mabry in the upper thigh. The metal shaft was still in the wound, sealing it, and while Seth was no doctor, he had seen his fair share of shrapnel wounds and far worse. He suspected the moment that thing moved, there was a good chance the old man could bleed out in a blink, if the femoral artery had been punctured.
“If you’d just . . . get this thing ... off me . . . I’d appreciate it,” Mabry wheezed, each word sounding labored and painful.
Seth pressed his fingers against the pulse in Mabry’s wrist and counted. “Yeah, well, I left my Iron Man suit at home, unfortunately, but we’ll have help here in a jiff. Try and take slow, shallow breaths,” he told him. “In and out. Does your chest hurt? Any pains in your arm?”
Mabry shook his head. “I told you . . . not having . . .”
“That’s okay, don’t talk. Save your breath. I believe you.” That was the one bit of good news in all this. Mabry didn’t appear to be having a heart attack after all.
The sirens grew quite loud as Pippa raced into the barn, her arms full of bath towels, and a roll of paper towels clutched in each of her hands. “I wasn’t sure,” she said, panting, “which kind you meant.”
“I think the cavalry is here,” Seth said. “Hold on to them, though, just in case.” He’d asked for the towels in case they’d needed them to help stanch any bleeding. Seth had already slipped his belt off on the run in, to use as a tourniquet, only there was no way to get to where the problem was without moving the tractor, and he was going to need a whole lot more than a stack of bath towels when that jack shaft shifted.
Seth closed his eyes in thanks when the siren went silent. He leaned back to look out the open barn doors, and saw the big Blue Hollow Falls volunteer fire truck, followed by their EMT truck, and another emergency vehicle all rumbling down the drive. More sirens howled in the distance, and he suspected Turtle Springs was sending up their finest, too. The more the merrier, he thought. We’re going to need it.
Pippa came around and sat cross-legged in the dirt next to Mabry on his other side. She put her hand on his forehead, then his shoulder. “You’ve given us quite a scare,” she told him, sounding like a cross headmistress, even as she stroked his arm and laid her palm once again over his forehead.
Seth noted she quite pointedly refrained from looking anywhere below the man’s chest.
“If this is the sort of thing you Yanks do for attention,” she went on, “I’ll thank you not to do it again while I’m here.”
Mabry smiled briefly at that, then wheezed, followed by a sharp gasp of pain. Pippa’s gaze flew to Seth’s for a moment, fear and panic quite clear in her big blue eyes.
Seth felt every bit as helpless and scared as she did, but he winked at her, mouthed, “You’re doing fine,” then got to his feet to go and meet the rescue team so he could fill them in on the situation.
In the end, it took quite a bit of doing, and he aged what felt like years as the paramedics worked to extract Mabry. Seth had climbed on Mabry’s other tractor and used it to drag a path through the melting snow, wide enough so the firetruck and the EMT truck could get all the way to the entrance of the barn. Pippa had offered to help, using the snowmobile to tamp down a path, but Seth had told her to stay by Mabry. She seemed to have a calming effect on him, and Seth could tell that’s where she really wanted to be. Other than to allow the paramedics to do their thing, she never left the old man’s side.
Once the trucks could reach the barn, things moved pretty quickly.
Seth helped the firemen, all of whom he knew by name, while Pippa was alternately being cheerleader and cross headmistress to Mabry, depending on what was most needed, more than once bringing a surprised smile to Seth’s face and those of the emergency crew.
In short order, the tractor was lifted off of Mabry, leaving the jack shaft in place, to be removed at the hospital. The same leg had suffered a bad, protruding fracture that had produced a fair amount of bleeding when the tractor was lifted off it. Too much, to Seth’s way of thinking, which had been proven true as Mabry went in and out of consciousness and his vitals began bottoming even as the paramedics rushed to stabilize the wound. All that was left to do after the heavy lifting was to stand on the sidelines and watch. It took Seth straight back to his days in the service. As he had then, Seth felt utterly helpless.
What seemed like an eternity later, Pippa and Seth stood side by side in the open barn doorway as the ambulance carrying Mabry slowly rolled out the driveway.
“How far do they have to go?” Pippa asked.
“The closest hospital is down in Hawksbill Valley, in Turtle Springs. About twenty-five miles from here.” At her gasp, he added, “There’s no traffic between here and there, and only one major intersection, so they’ll get him down there quickly.” Or as quickly as the winding mountain roads would let them, but he didn’t mention that part.
“I’m so glad the roads got cleared and the sun came out.” Pippa was rubbing her own arms as she said this, as if chilled, despite the much warmer temperatures and clear skies overhead. “I don’t want to be in the way, but can we go down and see him later?”
“I talked to Mabry’s daughter, Maggie,” Seth said. “She’s already on the way to the hospital. She said she’ll call me and let us know how he’s doing. I think we should wait until we hear from her.”
Pippa nodded, then turned to look back at the barn, to the tractor, now turned upright but still sitting at an awkward angle due to the broken axle. They both looked at the scatter of blood-soaked gauze and torn paper packets littering the packed dirt floor around the pool of blood that had soaked into the dirt. The firetruck had been called to head to another emergency right when the paramedics had gotten Mabry stabilized and into the ambulance. Time had been of the essence for the emergency teams on all fronts, so Seth had assured them he’d wear the gloves they’d given him to put all of the detritus in a trash bag. The EMT driver had also given him the number of a service that was trained and certified to do the kind of cleanup required after such an event. Seth wasn’t sure that would be necessary, but he’d taken the card nonetheless.
Seth worked to keep his mind focused on Mabry and not let it drift back. It was a discipline that had taken him a few years to master, but it still wasn’t easy. In fact, it was downright exhausting. He started making mental lists of what would need to be done going forward, not just in the immediate time frame, but long term, given the severity of Mabry’s injuries, all of which helped to keep his thoughts fully occupied.
“So much blood,” Pippa whispered.
Seth glanced at her and saw her own face had gone a ghostly shade of white. He knew that expression. He immediately slipped his arm through hers and turned her away from the interior of the barn, walking her outside into the fresh air and the blinding white of the sunshine reflecting on the rapidly melting snow. He steered her toward the back porch of the house. She didn’t put up even the slightest resistance. Seth knew all about working on adrenaline and the mind’s ability to stay ruthlessly focused during times of extreme trauma, just as he also knew the severe crash that could happen once the trauma had abated and time started to move forward again at normal speed.
“Mabry’s going to be all right,” Seth told her calmly, as if this was an everyday conversation they were having. Imprinting normal on a moment that felt like anything but, helped to divert the brain from the recent trauma to something else. Anything else. “He’s a stubborn old cuss.”
“He’s a decent, kind, and loving soul. He doesn’t deserve this,” she countered, her words thick with emotion.
“It was an accident, Pippa, not a reprimand,” he told her gently. “They can happen to anyone.” He felt the fine trembling begin to vibrate down her arms. He knew those weren’t surface tremors, but the kind that went bone deep and were uncontrollable, shaking a person right down to their core.
He glanced at her just in time to see her eyes go a bit spacy. Ignoring the screaming tension that hadn’t quite unknotted the muscles in his neck or down his spine—the result of fighting both the war going on inside the barn, and the one he’d stopped officially fighting several years ago—Seth immediately sprang into action once more. “It’s okay; you’re all right,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, quiet, and smooth. “Up you go,” he added, scooping her into his arms. “Hold on.”
She was sturdier than she looked, he thought, but he could feel the tremors shaking hard in her legs now, and knew he’d gotten her just moments before she’d have gone down. He hoisted her up a bit higher against his chest. “Put your hands around my neck,” he told her as he moved directly toward the house at a steady but unrushed pace. She needed soothing, not more alarm. “Lock your fingers together. Good, good,” he murmured, as he bumped the screen door open, then pushed his way in through the rear porch to the back door that led into the kitchen.
He walked through that room, down the short hall to the living room and eyed the recliner, thinking he could lower her there, push it back, then give her a few moments to wind back down. She just gripped him harder when he started to move her. So, instead, he nudged the fancy little antique coffee table aside and lowered his tall frame down to the middle of the small couch, then settled her across his lap.
“Thank . . . you,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Foo—foolish.”
He tucked her cheek against his chest, and slowly stroked her back, then her hair, then her back again. She slid her hands from his neck and pillowed them under her cheeks, pinning them there as if willing them to stop trembling. He could still feel the tremors in her torso and legs, but they weren’t as strong now. “Not foolish,” he told her. “Human. I’ve been there, too.” He tightened his hold just a bit when she tried to move. “Stay put awhile longer, okay? Give yourself a break.”
He rocked slightly, but steadily, and continued to stroke and soothe, which might have seemed silly to some, but he knew the feeling of being held, being rocked, was in itself a powerful trigger, taking one back to a time before memories truly began to form.
He felt the tremors slowly ease from her limbs, and her breathing steadied. She took long, slow breaths, and let them out in equally slow, shuddering releases. He eventually stopped rocking her, but continued to hold her, realizing the motions, the soothing, had worked their magic on the knots and tension in his own neck and spine as well.
“I’m guessing,” she said at long length, her voice a rough whisper, “that it took a bit more than a tractor accident for you to end up curled in a ball like this.”
“Trauma is trauma,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t really respect or conform to any kind of scale.”
She finally lifted her head and looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said, simply.
He smiled then, a brief curving of his lips. “It helped me, too.”
She looked surprised by that, then smiled briefly. “I’m glad. That makes it easier to accept.”
Their gazes caught, held, and quite swiftly another feeling entirely engulfed him. He’d learned about extreme situations triggering all sorts of primal responses, but he’d never found himself experiencing trauma with a member of the opposite sex. The urge to lower his head, take her mouth—and not in some sweet, gentle, get-to-know-you kiss—was as compelling and strong a need as he’d ever experienced. His body had surged quite insistently to life, ferociously seconding that idea. You were just about to dump her in Noah’s cabin and get back to work, he reminded himself, needing rational thinking to make a swift return. Don’t complicate things.
Then her gaze dropped to his mouth, lingered there a long moment, and moved slowly back up to meet his own.
“Pippa,” he began, knowing he had to nip this off, and quick. But she’d whispered, “Seth,” at the very same time, and something about the sound of his name on those little bow-tie lips of hers, with that bottomless sea of blue above them, doomed him to the pull of the moment.
He leaned down just as she arched up to meet him. They were both in it, both wanting, both throwing all caution aside and simply living in that one, singular moment of need and want.
She whimpered, then fisted her hands in his hair when he started to lift his head, and slipped her tongue past his lips, in case he had any doubts that the sound had been one of need. He held her there, suckled her tongue, then slipped his into the wet, hot recesses of her mouth. They instantly fell into a mating ritual of sliding, suckling, kissing, taking a breath, then delving in once again. She writhed against him, and he pulled her up so she could straddle his thighs.
The position equalized the better part of the vast difference in their heights and she cried out when the very softest part of her rode on top of the most rigid part of him. He felt her shudder through an instant climax despite the layers of clothes between them, making his own hips rock upward of their own volition, allowing her to wring every last drop of pleasure from the moment, if not from him.
It had been a very long time since he’d felt the warmth of a woman wrapped around him in the most intimate of ways, a truth his body was screaming at him to rectify. But instead of tearing away the few flimsy barriers between them and plunging himself mindlessly into the sweet, hot bliss he knew awaited him, he broke free of her mouth and wrapped her up against his chest, reaching for any shred of rational thought he could find, a tether back to reality, no matter how tenuous.
She was panting heavily, her cheek and lips pressed against the side of his now damp neck. He rested his own cheek on top of her head while they both climbed back down from the stratosphere they’d just shot themselves into.
Neither of them said a word as their breathing slowly steadied. He didn’t loosen his hold on her though, and neither did she try to crawl from his lap. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, as he weighed all the pros of perhaps doing this again sometime, preferably when sprawled across the wide expanse of his bed, against all the reasons why that would be a very, very bad idea.
He’d known her for two days and already he could call up picture-perfect moments of her in his mind. Her beaming smile just before she dropped into a deep curtsy after her literally over-the-top snowmobile-entry into his life; her sitting on the floor of his barn, goat in her lap, brushing Dexter’s coat; her leaning on the doorway, batting her lashes while asking for a Shetland pony. Reflexively grabbing her throat after barking out a laugh, sitting next to Mabry, goading him into staying strong and alert, looking hurt and so very small when she realized he was getting rid of her.
He swallowed a sigh at that last part. She was bold and daring, confident and independent ... vulnerable and still a little fragile, and she kissed him like he was the last man on earth.
He’d never met anyone quite like her, and he’d be a fool if he didn’t admit she was exactly the kind of woman who might sneak in and steal his heart. Then go traipsing back to Ireland with it tucked deep in her pocket.
So, that would be a no, then. He had not a single regret in having done it, but he wouldn’t be kissing Pippa MacMillan again.
“As a means to getting oneself past a bit of shock,” she said a little primly, “I’d have to say that ranked even higher than the rocking and patting.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “Though that helped a great deal, too.”
Her gaze was direct. Not hopeful, not dismissive, but simply ... real.
“It’s definitely going on my preferred list,” Seth replied, perhaps a bit more cautiously. She was still straddling his lap, and his body hadn’t quite climbed on board with the whole never-doing-that-again decision. He suspected she’d climb off him soon enough, though, and he found he wasn’t in any hurry to expedite the end of this particular moment-out-of-time. If it wasn’t going to happen again, then he wouldn’t mind having all there was from this one, and he wasn’t going to apologize for that.
“I’ve never kissed a man with a beard,” she said, quite contemplatively.
His grin was spontaneous. “And?”
“It’s softer than I’d have thought.” She lowered her gaze, studied it a bit, then looked at him again. “I quite liked it, actually, and I didn’t think I would.”
Just like that his body was right back on board. “You’d been giving it some thought then?”
Her cheeks, already pink from said beard and the heat of the moment, deepened in color. “Would it make your ego grow to unbearable proportions if I said yes?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to mention she’d already made other parts of him grow to unbearable proportions, so what was one more? “I believe I can keep it in check. I’ll do my best, at any rate.”
“Then yes,” she said, rather decisively. “I have. Not that I planned on ever doing anything about it, of course. I mean, you’re my sister’s best friend’s brother. And we live an ocean apart. So why start something up, you know? Too much at stake.”
It was perverse, but the more she made his argument for him, the more he wanted to play devil’s advocate.
Instead, he said, “If it helps, my behavior just now notwithstanding,” he added with a smile, “I’m not casual about things like this, either.” Which was the truth, and a big part of why it had been a long time for him. “So, I would agree with your assessment.” He almost laughed again when a flash of disappointment crossed her face before she nodded in consensus. What, were they each hoping the other would convince them that maybe continuing wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all?
“After spending the past four years now with all those out-of-body, instant star experiences going on, can I just say thank you for this lovely, quite in-the-body moment? It was well worth the wait.”
Again, he had to swallow the entirely inappropriate comment that rose to his lips, about how much he’d enjoy a lovely in-her-body moment, too. Then what she said sank in and he paused and met her gaze. “Not a casual person, either, then, I assume.”
She shook her head. “My life changed pretty swiftly. There hadn’t been anyone special for a time back then, because I’d been working all the time, taking gigs anywhere I could get them, traveling a fair bit. Not conducive to the kind of relationship we non-casual types gravitate toward, you know?”
“I do know,” he said, then chuckled. “Intimately.”
She smiled then, too. “And when things started to take off, it was kind of odd, because if I did have a chance to meet someone who interested me, likely he was part and parcel of the industry side of things, or he was another musician, or possibly just starstruck . . . or something even less savory.” She broke off, shook her head, let out a short laugh. “Sounds ungrateful, but it’s simply how it is.”
“Sounds complicated,” Seth replied. “For me, it’s the opposite. I moved out here, bought a place up in the mountains.” He smiled then. “Just me, my farm animals, and my llama.”
“Yes, well, I’ve heard about men like you, growing up as I did on a farm,” she said, then shot him a dry smile.
“Not that lonely,” he said on a short laugh. “Not yet, anyway,” he added, which made her laugh. “Blue Hollow Falls is a smaller than small town. Not much in the way of fellow singles, and I’ve been a bit too busy since I moved here to look farther afield.”
“So I heard. Mabry told me about the converted silk mill. I’m hoping to get down to see it, just as soon as—oh.” She broke off, frowned, then just looked sad.
“What?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Mabry said he’d teach me how to drive on the right side of the road, and offered me a loan of one of his farm trucks. I could simply lease a car, but he seemed so tickled about it. I think he’s like my dad that way, happy to know he’s of help to others. So I said yes. After today, though . . .” She sighed then. “I’m so worried for him. Worried about his farm. What will he do? What will happen?”
Seth found himself stroking her hair again, then her cheek, as if out of long habit, and had to force himself to drop his hand, which was made more difficult by the light that had instantly flared to life in her sad eyes. “It will work out,” he told her. “We help each other out here. I suspect Maggie will stay on, at least for a while, to help out with things.”
“Mabry said she might be moving back here permanently, taking over the place when he retires. Though, honestly, I couldn’t see him ever retiring. At least not before now.” She let out a sigh. “Mabry said something about Maggie’s husband being able to work from home, and from the looks of the scrapbook he shared with me today, her sons are grown and in college now.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Seth said, “about her moving back, but maybe this will simply expedite those plans.”
“I hope so. Even if he comes back from this, it’s going to take a long while. And I can’t imagine he’ll be fit soon, or possibly ever, to run the place by himself.”
“He has help, and he has Maggie.”
She nodded. “I know, and that’s such a good thing. It’s only, he strikes me as being a lot like my grandfather, and my father. My grandfather worked right up to the moment he passed, saying he couldn’t imagine what in the world he’d do with himself if he didn’t get up with the sun every day. My father is much the same way. I suspect Mabry is, too.”
“You’re probably right, though it would do him well to slow down a bit, or at least not rely only on himself and the few farmhands he has to keep the place going. If Maggie can move back, I think that might be best for both of them.”
“First, he has to heal,” she said. “I know more than a little about that.” She shuddered lightly. “Maybe not to the degree of what he’ll be facing, but—”
“I don’t think it’s as much apples and oranges as all that. If it’s something that prevents you from doing what you do in life, then one is just as monumental as the other.”
She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again; the corners of her mouth lifted slightly. “Thank you. I don’t think I’d ever thought of it like that. It ... helps.”
He wanted to ask her what, exactly, she needed help with, but didn’t. Every minute they spent like this was going to make it harder to keep his hands off her going forward. He was attracted to her, yes. But he also really liked her. And that was the far greater temptation, as it turned out.
“Well,” she said, “I should probably find my way out of your lap. I’ll help you in the barn.”
“No,” Seth said, brooking no argument. “I’ll see to that.”
“Okay,” she agreed, not bothering to hide her relief, which made them both smile. “I’ll be happy to pick up the slack in some other way. I do want to be of help.”
He braced his hands on her hips and helped her shift back off his lap and to her feet. He decided he’d wait a few more minutes before doing the same. “You were a big help out there,” he said. “It wasn’t easy doing what you did, staying by him, talking him through it.”
“I felt so helpless,” she said. “I wish I could have done more.”
“I felt the same way. I’ll call down to the firehouse in a bit and talk to the paramedics, see what they know.”
“If you’d rather go on down there now, I could just go ahead and borrow one of Mabry’s farm trucks as planned. If Maggie or his grandsons need it, I can rent something and get it back to them.”
“What about the driving lessons?”
She smiled. “I’ll drive around the yard a bit first, get to know the truck. Given the lack of cars on the road up here, I should be able to sort myself out fairly quickly.”
Seth nodded. “Actually, I’m pretty sure you will.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, and performed one of her little curtsies, which made him chuckle. “If you’ll give me directions to Noah’s cabin—”
“About that,” Seth broke in, his smile fading. “I should have told you—”
“No, I understand,” she said, then added, “I truly do. I was forced on you at an apparently difficult time. That’s not a good thing for you or for me. The little fishing cabin looks perfect.”
She was putting on a good face, and he appreciated that, but he’d seen her true reaction that moment in the truck, when he’d first pulled into the drive. “I could have handled it better,” he said. “I apologize. I usually have better manners than that.”
She busied herself pushing at her hair, smoothing her clothing, looking anywhere but at him. “I feel bad just leaving you with the mess in the barn.”
“It won’t take that long. I’ve had some experience with that kind of thing.”
Her gaze flew right to his then. “Oh, right.” Her expression fell. “I’m so sorry. I should have thought. This wasn’t easy on you, either. And on top of that, you had to deal with me getting all flighty.”
His grin was swift and very real. “You’ll get no complaints from me.”
Her cheeks flushed a bright pink, but she laughed at the same time. “I suppose I could blame my loose behavior on not being in my right mind.” Her smile settled into something more sweet than wry, and her voice held a note of honest affection when she said, “But I can’t say I regret it, either.”
He nodded, but opted to remain silent.
The silence spun out and their gazes remained locked. She finally looked away. “So,” she said briskly, “if we can figure out where Mabry keeps his truck keys and which truck you think he’d want me to take, I’ll get out of your hair once and for all.”
Seth’s mind flashed to how she’d fisted her hands in his lengthy locks, how she’d pulled his mouth to hers, no uncertainty at all about what she wanted. His body flashed back to awareness, reminding him just how much he’d liked that about her. Like I had a chance in hell of ever forgetting. Seth stood and quickly shifted around her, leading her along the hall to the kitchen, willing his body to settle down. “I’m sure the keys will be in the truck. I know he drives the big Ford Ranger, so I’m guessing he was thinking about his old blue and white Chevy. Not much you could do to hurt that old thing.” Seth kept on walking, through the kitchen door, across the porch, and outside, waiting for her to catch the door behind him.
They walked across the backyard toward a second, smaller barn that Mabry used as more of a makeshift garage. The fire trucks coming and going had flattened the bulk of the snow behind the house, and the sun was doing a pretty good job on the rest of it. “It’s slippery out here. Be careful,” he cautioned, trying to silence the running argument going on inside his head.
This didn’t feel right. Not just because it made him a rude host or because he knew she’d been disappointed by the change in plans. The plain and simple truth was, he didn’t want her somewhere else. All the more reason to make sure that’s exactly where she goes. If she stayed under his roof, he was pretty certain, one way or the other, they’d end up in his bed. And hers. And probably every other flat surface in the house. The hunger she’d ignited in him was no small thing. And he was pretty damn sure she’d say the same. It was for both their sakes that it was best if they were in separate digs. He was doing the right thing. For himself, for her, for their respective siblings.
“We don’t have to mention this to Kate or Moira,” Pippa said as she came to stand beside him. “About my being in the cabin.”
They both looked at the truck, an aging aqua-blue and white Chevy pickup whose best years were behind it. In the right hands, it would be a classic, but out here, it was just a beat-up old farm truck. Seth hoped she didn’t mind getting her backside dusty, or worse.
“Probably a good idea,” he said. “Once Moira is off on her grand adventure, she won’t be giving us much thought anyway.” He looked at Pippa then. “It was very kind of you to offer up your place to a total stranger.”
She smiled easily. “Not exactly a stranger. We’ve not met, but she’s Katie’s dearest pal, and that makes her family. I was happy to help. And, honestly, it wasn’t like I was using it, so it really wasn’t much of a favor to grant. My oldest brother, Garrett, owns a pub in the village there. I’ve instructed him to keep an eye. He’s done that much and more for me and Katie over the years, so she’ll be well looked after.” She laughed. “Probably more so than she’d like, actually. He’s quite the daddy hen.”
“I’m liking the man better by the minute,” Seth said. “So, there’s a pub in your family, too? My folks started ours right after they married. We’ve all worked there when we were younger. My older brother, Aiden, runs it with them now. My oldest sister, Kathleen, takes care of the books. She and my mom have a small bookkeeping business.”
“Sounds lovely,” Pippa told him. “Ours isn’t a family business. Garrett is the first tavern owner among us. Katie has worked for him, though.”
“Where do you fall in the family lineup?” he asked.
“Katie is the youngest at twenty-six, the baby of the clan, like Moira, which is likely why they bonded so closely. She’s four years younger than me. Then my brother Cassian, who is right in between us, then me, then our three older brothers. Garrett is ten years older than I am, Brian eight years older, and Braedon five. He’s the stuntman.” She grinned. “My folks had three, then took a break, then had three more. What about you?”
“In the middle. Aiden is forty-one, then Kathleen, who is thirty-nine. Both married, both keeping my parents out of our hair by giving them plenty of grandkids. Then Catriona, who is thirty-six. She’s an engineer, engaged to an engineer, so a match made in heaven,” he said with a chuckle. “Then me, thirty-two, my sister, Branna, twenty-eight. She’s an elementary school teacher, wrangling third graders this year. And Moira, twenty-five, lawyer.”
“That’s an impressive lineup,” Pippa said, smiling.
“No less than your own,” he said with a nod.
“Even with our age differences and me and Brae being all over the world at any given time, we’re still close. It sounds like it’s the same for you.”
He nodded. “It is. It’s hard for folks to understand how united a large family can be unless they come from one.”
“Oh, aye, it’s true. I often wonder how my parents did it and remained married, without doing away with any of us during our teen years.”
Seth chuckled and their gazes caught, held, then held some more.
Pippa ended the moment by walking around to the driver side of the truck. “Brae would never let me live it down if I couldn’t manage a simple truck,” she said, looking through the driver-side window.
“It’s a stick,” Seth mentioned. “Clutch.”
“I know the lingo,” she said dryly, then opened the door and hoisted herself up on the seat, not so much as glancing at the dust, straw, and other farm detritus littering the interior. Of course, she was already dusty and dirty from sitting on the barn floor earlier, which hadn’t seemed to faze her, either.
She pulled the seat belt across her lap, then undid it and reached under the front of the seat to move it forward, then forward some more. Seat belt back on, she turned her attention to the steering wheel and dash. The keys were, in fact, dangling from the ignition. “Okay, laddie, I’m sure you want to do me proud today,” she murmured in a soothing tone as she pushed in the clutch and started the engine. “There you go,” she purred, then shifted into first gear. “Let’s see how you—” She broke off as the truck lurched forward, and promptly died.
To his credit, Seth had simply stepped back calmly when she’d started the engine. “I think you’re in third.”
“It’s backwards,” she called out. “We have the clutch the same, but I’m used to the gears being on me left.” And to her credit, after two more tries, and a few leaps forward, she pulled off as smoothly as if she’d driven the truck for years. She did a circle around the yard, then stopped, backed it up, and went forward again, then repeated the whole maneuver twice more. Then with a wave to him, she carefully pulled out onto the road and was gone.
It wasn’t until Seth was halfway through cleaning up the barn, trying like hell to ignore the echo of utter silence that surrounded him once again, that he realized he’d never given her directions to Noah’s cabin.
Grinning, and knowing he had no business being happy for the excuse, he closed the barn doors to keep the critters from getting inside until he could get back and finish the job. Then he hopped in his truck, and headed out after her.