He reaches for a pair of sweats sitting folded on top of a laundry basket in the corner of the closet. “Here.” Logan turns, his eyes raking over my bare legs, lingering on the soft skin where his shirt hits the tops of my thighs. “They’ll be big, but you can tuck them in your boots.”
I shake my head but take the offered sweats. I’m going to look ridiculous either way. Might as well ruin his sweats instead of myjeans. “We need to make sure this thing...”—I motion between the two of us—“is as believable as if it were actually real. No one can question it or we’ll lose. The court case and my promotion. It’ll all be for nothing.”
“What do we need to do?” The annoying man hands me a thick pair of white socks next, and I make a mental note to add a few things to my online cart when we’re done feeding the fucking cows. Good fucking grief. Serena is never going to believe this.
“We need to convince everyone.”
Thankfully, Logan is the one moving the hay and pellets into Gretzky and Posey’s pens, but Waverly was right. My heels do not belong on this farm. The cows, however, are adorable in an odd kind of way. Fluffy and small. Not at all like what I think of when I hear the wordcow.
Not that the Triple Crown doesn’t have those kinds of cows too. They’re just on a different part of the ranch.
“How big will they get?” I ask from the corner of the small pink and green barn in the section Logan has referred to as Waverly’s sanctuary. Apparently, my new sister-in-law has created her own land of the misfit toys for animals that need love and a safe home. While the horse barn is state of the art and elegantly beautiful, Waverly’s section of the ranch is a mismatch of small barns, greenhouses, fun colors, and beautiful flowers. It’s like an Instagram account for an English cottage garden had a baby with a pink-farm aesthetic come to life. It’s a teeny bit chaotic and a tiny bit intimidating and a little bit perfect.
“The average Highland cow could grow to at least four hundred pounds, but these girls were bred to be micro minis, something Waves is strongly against. And even then, they’re toobig for their owners to care for. That’s how they ended up here. When they got too big to be house-trained, Waves took them in.” Posy pushes her nose into Logan’s hand, and he grins at me. “You still have the apple I gave you?”
I pull it out of my pocket from across the barn, ready to toss it to him, and the fucker shakes his head at me. “Come here, Olive. Consider this step one in our trust-fall exercise.”
“I never said we needed a trust-fall exercise,” I argue. Posey might be small for a cow, but she’s still a cow. And I’ve never fed a farm animal before.
“Olive...” he chides, and I take a few tentative steps, my eyes locked on Posey’s as she watches me move.
“I swear to God, Adler, if this cow bites me, I’m going to throw you to the wolves when we go to dinner at my parents’ house. And my mother’s bite is worse than any cow’s could ever be.”
“I think I’d be more worried about your father’s right hook, Olive.” He reaches back and takes my hand in his, pulling me forward. “Now come here, and don’t be scared. We let her around Maggie. Do you really think I’d do that if I thought for even one second she wasn’t harmless?”
I roll my eyes. “When you put it like that.”
Logan moves me in front of him and lowers his face to the side of mine. “Be very careful, wife. I get the strongest urge to put you over my knee when you roll those eyes of yours at me.”
“What?” I ask, shocked, and my asshole husband laughs.
“See, Olive. Gentle as a baby.”
Posey’s big tongue tickles my hand as she takes the apple from it.
“It’s going to be so hard to make people believe I love you, Logan,” I growl. “Especially after I kill you in your sleep.”
“Uh, uh, uhhh. You vowed not to do that, remember?” He spins me around and before I realize what he plans to do, hishands slide to my hips, and I’m lifted and placed on a small work-bench counter in the corner of the barn. “Now, crash course. Fill me in on all things Olivia St. James.”
I sit silently for a minute, watching as my husband strips his shirt off and tosses it to me before grabbing a pitchfork. “What...” Damn, why does he have to be so hot? “Umm...”What the hell? I don’t stutter.“Well, I’m the youngest of three. My sister, Brynlee, and her husband, Deacon, will be at dinner. Their oldest daughter is away at school. But my nephew, Knight, will probably be there too. Killian and his family are touring right now, so you don’t have to meet him just yet.”
There. I managed to get words out instead of hopping off this bench and running my tongue over the sweat dripping down the golden skin covering his beautifully muscled chest. “They’ll want to know how we met, when we reconnected, and why they were kept out of it until now.”
“Do you normally keep them in the loop on your love life?”
It takes an extra minute to process his words because I’m using all my existing brain power to force myself not to jump my husband.
Until now, I always thought businessmen were hot.
Their refined looks.
Their powerful presence.
Their ruthlessness in the boardroom.
But right now... holy hell, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything hotter.
And that’s going to be a problem.
