AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Beau probably hadn’t helped matters much.
She didn’t seem to care for me either, but I didn’t take her general disdain personal—wasn’t the first time a rich girl wouldn’t give me the time. She was probably used to five-star accommodations, and my place would have had negative stars if they were awarded, seeing as how I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cleaned. Granted, she might be hard pressed to find anything up to her standards in Roseville. But any way you cut it, my house held a firm spot at the bottom of that particular list.
Still, I wouldn’t have been mad about keeping her here and the potential that particular possibility held—I could think of a great number of things to occupy her time while I had her. I might have even dusted, which was an admission that’d probably knock my mother over dead. But to have a chance at that? I’d dust. Hell, I’d even scrub a toilet.
But a good time was all it’d ever be. I’d been with princess types before and had learned that lesson well: girls like that didn’t go for guys like me. And it was just as well. Ducks didn’t end up with geese, and British Ladies didn’t end up with bartenders from Tennessee.
I punched my arms into a plaid shirt and headed back to the living room, fastening the pearl snaps as I walked. She’d done up her suitcase and rolled it onto the patio where she sat on the top, staring down the drive with a far-off look on her face that left me curious as to what she was thinking about. I hooked a pair of boots on my fingers and pushed open the screen.
She looked up with a weary smile on her face. “Well, don’t you look smart.”
I smoothed a hand down my shirtfront. “This old thing?”
Jessa chuckled and stood while I pulled on my boots. “Why do you have so many of those?” She nodded at my shoes.
I inspected them. “Well, these are my everyday boots. I’ve got a work pair, a huntin’ pair, a Sunday best pair, and a trash pair for the dirty work.”
“I see. Wouldn’t want to get your Sunday best covered in muck.”
“Exactly.” I grabbed her suitcase and trotted down the stairs, past the truck I’d been working on, past my old Camaro, and to my Scout.
Besides my mama and baseball, I’d never loved anything as much as I loved that baby blue hunk of metal. I’d rescued her from the impound, restored her nearly from scratch. She was almost always topless—as it should be—especially in the summertime, and I realized a little too late that I hadn’t parked under the big oak next to the house like I usually did. The seats were probably a thousand degrees, but with the truck half gutted and the inside of the Camaro covered in dog hair, her ladyship didn’t have much of an option.
Her ladyship. Inwardly, I chuckled. That irritated, pink look on her face was too good not to summon at every opportunity. Woulda gone with princess over duchess if I didn’t suspect she’d have an aneurism.
I reached over the side of the Scout to put Jessa’s suitcase and overnight bag in the trunk, snagging a T-shirt from the back seat. But then I caught sight of her, and it took just about all I had in me not to laugh.
She’d opened the door with a squeak of the hinge, but then she just stood there, looking around for a clue as to how the hell to get in. Might as well have been advanced calculus for the figuring that went on behind her eyes. The floorboard hit her mid-thigh, and I wondered if she’d ever endured the unladylike spread of her legs it would take to get her in.
I wondered a lot about the unladylike spread of her legs and what had and hadn’t been done there.
“‘Scuse me,” I said as I reached her, and she moved out of the way so I could lay the shirt down on the seat.
“I’m not sure how to... that is, should I just?—”
“Come here,” was my only warning.
I grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her in to the sweetest little gasp of surprise. She leaned back into me for balance, and I took a moment to enjoy the feel of her ass against my stomach as I lifted, her hands gripping my forearms, the sweet smell of her in my nose.
Her face was red as a firetruck as she found her feet and sat. “Surely there’s an easier way.”
I closed her door and shot her a smile. “Probably, but that was more fun.”
She didn’t say anything, but her face was a mixture of disdain and a flustered sort of awareness. Or maybe disdain because of the flustered sort of awareness, which amused me endlessly. Spinning my keys around my index finger, I made my way around the truck to get in. But the second I opened the door, Beau shot in like a goddamn cannon, running around and slobbering all over the place.
“Beau, you asshole,” I grumbled through my teeth, reaching in to try to get ahold of his collar. But, seeming to know what I was after, he jumped in the back seat, sat up straight as a soldier, and panted so hard, he was smiling.
I sighed. “You okay with him back there?”
“If he stays put,” she said, brushing copper dog hair off her shorts.
“Can’t promise you that.”
A sigh and a resigned smile. “It’s fine.”
“Well, aren’t you a good sport.”
I hopped in, and a satisfied shiver worked through me at the rumbling sound the Scout made when I turned the engine over and threw her into gear. We bumped and bounced our way out of the yard and to the drive, and I wasn’t ashamed about hitting every hole so she’d bounce on the squeaky seat with that terrified look on her face. When I stopped to unlock the gate, I pulled a hair tie off the stack hanging on my gear shaft and tossed it into her lap.
