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“No, you don’t fall off.”
“You’re hilarious.” Brendan sighed, but he got on behind her, hands loosely circling her waist. Nicole rolled her eyes; she seemed to be doing a lot of that this morning.
“You’re going to have to hold on tighter than that — come on,” she said, pulling his arms further around her waist so that he was pretty much hugging her. She could feel his body warmth against her back. Brendan hesitated for a second before settling in better, his position more solid behind her as he held on. For all her teasing, he very well might fly backwards off the ATV and go sprawling in the dirt, and he knew it.
Nicole revved the engine and got the machine going, herding the cattle from behind for the short trip to the field they currently spent their days in. She hadn’t really thought about it when she’d grabbed Brendan’s arms and wrapped them around herself; she’d just been in work mode, focused on the next task ahead of her. But now, riding after the herd, not going terribly fast behind the lumbering cattle, she was hyper aware of how close they were sitting together. Brendan was holding on snugly, his knees brushing the outsides of her thighs as she drove, and she could feel his breath coming in bursts on the back of her ear.
Nicole had point-blankrefusedto acknowledge the knee-jerk attraction she’d had to the guy, focusing purely on clawing her way back to owning the farm and the billion little tasks that the day held. But now that he was pressed up against her, large and warm as he held her waist, the traitorous little thoughts came crawling back with all the time to fester away as the herd dawdled along.
So he was good-looking. Fine. She admitted it. He wasverygood-looking. He was literally tall, dark and handsome. The way he carried himself only made it more obvious; his confidence, even when he was flailing around without a clue, adding a swagger to the whole package that had Nicole struggling to keep her eyes in her head.
She was allowed to dislike himandfind him attractive. Both of those things could be true at the same time. She was allowed to think he was completely out of his mind and also infuriatingly charming. She was human, and humans were attracted to each other sometimes, despite their better judgment. It was kind of how the whole human race had kept itself going for this long.
So, Nicole beat back the electric tingles at the back of her neck with rationality. He could keep on being pleasant to look at and he could be charming from his head to his toes, but she could keep her end goal in sight at the same time. She wasn’t some schoolgirl with a crush on the first boy to cross her path… She had enough sense to keep her head on her shoulders.
They got the cows into the field without incident, herding in the last few stragglers and shutting the gate behind them.
Brendan leaned up against the fence post, the sun now well up into the sky and shining down on them, picking out the auburn strands in his hair that Nicole had noticed the day before. Well, so much for keeping her head on straight… She wished she was more flexible so that she could kick herself.
“So,” he said, taking his phone back out to take notes, which Nicole triedreallyhard not to see as eager and endearing. “We bring them back to the sheds in the afternoon to get milked again. They spend the night in the sheds, then back in the morning to do it all again?”
“Pretty much.”
“And at some point we take that milk and get it ready for sale?”
“Yep. Like I said, it’s the end of winter so there’s not all that much of it, but yeah, that’s the gist of it. That all gets done in the creamery.”
“I’ll get you to show me at some point,” he said, writing down more notes for himself. “I’ll definitely need supervision for that. Wouldn’t want to blow up the building.”
His self-deprecation was charming, but it still kept taking Nicole by surprise. For a billionaire who’d spent his days sweet-talking in boardrooms, he was surprisingly humble.
“You’re very comfortable with being oblivious,” she said, not even thinking before the words were out of her mouth.
Brendan huffed a laugh. “Oblivious is a good word for it.”
“I didn’t mean…” God, she just couldn’t help her fat mouth, could she?
“It’s fine,” said Brendan with that forgiving smile he’d given her so many times that morning already. “If I’m going to do this, then thick skin is kind of a must. And besides, you’re not wrong.”
“Sorry,” she said with a grimace.
“Stop apologizing. I asked you to stay on to teach me, not to coddle me.”
Nicole looked at him long and hard, past the too-expensive dress shirt and coat, trying hard to read his face, like it was the blurb to a book. She just couldn’t quite get a handle on him, this clueless rich guy who was so eager to learn about something so outside of his wheelhouse. Reading his face didn’t help any, especially when he stared straight back with a searching expression of his own.
Nicole broke her gaze away, straightening her ponytail, and looked out at the cattle as if she were intently interested in them. She decided to ignore the small chuckle that Brendan let out beside her.
“And what now?” he asked, voice particularly chipper as Nicole felt a scowl creeping onto her face.
“Now,” she said, turning back to the ATV, “I show you all the chores that need to get done through the day to keep this place running.”
He followed her, climbing on the back, and as she drove, Nicole refused to be even remotely flustered by the hands around her waist.
CHAPTER6
BRENDAN
It should be illegal to wake up at four a.m. Maybe it was, somewhere in the world. It wasn’t really night and it certainly wasn’t morning; it was a strange in-between time that had no real purpose. Even so, Brendan blinked awake in the dark of his bedroom, switching off the phone on his alarm before the sound carried down the hall and woke Nicole up.
