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WHEN QUINN PUT on her white shoes the next morning, and her short floral dress, it was every bit a tactical maneuver.
She had pushed her way into working for him for the rest of the week, and she knew that it was risky to dress to work indoors.
Especially because he hadn’t agreed to any of it. But she was going to prove herself, by God, and she knew she was better in the office than she was out in the field.
Though, she did feel a little bit of regret over the idea of not spending the day with him, and she didn’t know what that was.
He was a compelling man.
It had to be said. Handsome, too.
She spent way too much time thinking about that. And the whole shirtless thing really had messed her brain up.
Except she just thought of his sister, and the way that she talked about him, and then the way that he smelled. Even after a long hard day’s work.
Or maybe especially after a long hard day’s work.
She frowned.
She was not going to let this get into crush territory. Crushes were feelings. She didn’t want feelings.
It was good to acknowledge this. Good to try to take it all and sort through it, untangle it, because yesterday had been unacceptable on all fronts. His bare chest didn’t make her angry. She thought it was nice-looking. Maybe if she could admit it, put it all where it belonged and stop it all from becoming this big, rolling ball of overlarge feelings that were threatening to bowl her over, she could actually focus on the task at hand.
She was acting like she had no control over this. And okay, she wasn’t choosing to find him hot. But she could choose what she did about it. She could choose how she reacted to it.
He was good-looking, yes, point established many years ago, but there were a few things to consider. He was eleven years older than her. Which was outrageous. He was more in line to be a mentor, if anything, when it came to ranch work, and definitely not anything else.
Plus, and most of all, she didn’t even like the man.
Well, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t like she had sworn off physical relationships forever. It was just that she had no desire to be entangled in something serious.
She hadn’t seen romance work well in her family. And yes, she was rooting for Gus and Alaina, she really was. But Alaina’s situation was very specific to her. She’d been pregnant, and she had been headed a specific direction because of the decisions she made regarding that pregnancy anyway.
Quinn wanted to be established in herself before she introduced anything new into her life.
And a sexual relationship would be something new.
How did you go from thinking that he was handsome to thinking about sex?
She wasn’t exactly sure how she had managed that, and she didn’t especially like it. It was unnecessary.
Deeply unnecessary.
But she was committed to her task. And she didn’t need to be regretful about not spending the day with him.
Not at all.
She got into the car and began the short drive over to his place.
It was funny. This reminded her more of being in school than it did anything else. Because, of course, to work at Sullivan’s she didn’t have to commute.
She’d lived in dorms at school, but even that had felt like more of a commute than the ranch. Especially because there were many days where they simply got up and baked in the kitchen, started working on preserves. Put things in the root cellar, wandered around the gardens.
They worked the closest to their house of any of the other families. And they had really made the place a home. Getting up in the morning and driving to a job was strange.
Not that it was a job. It was more of a forced bartering situation. Assuming he agreed to the barter. Otherwise, she was basically just offering to do the man’s paperwork for nothing.
Joy.
