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“Daddy issues, remember?”
With a sigh, I shoved my fork into the hay and started filling the next trough. “You and me both, since we’re being honest.”
A pause. “Tell me about him.”
“He was …” I thought through a fork of hay. “He was my best friend. Everybody said we were just alike. Looked alike, laughed the same. Our smiles went up on the same side, same sense of humor. Every day he’d get his Thermos and pack us into the truck to work the farm, tend the bees. He taught me everything I know.” I drifted away for a moment before speaking again. “When he died, Mama was…well, we were all lost. I was the youngest of us, but I knew what he’d do, so I did it. I took care of them just like I always will, and the farm too. So if you really want to know my motivation, aside from my love for the creatures I care for, it’s defending my home just like Daddy would have.”
He was quiet for a bit, watching me shovel. “Do they know? Your mom and sisters?”
“That I take care of them like I think he would? I don’t know. It’s not a thing that’s said aloud, but I think they have an inkling, or a feeling at least.”
“Is that why you made up the curse?”
“I didn’t make up the curse. It’s been around since my grandmother stole somebody’s boyfriend a million years ago, and now we don’t get to keep who we love unless they possess vaginas.”
“You can’t actually believe that, though.”
I stopped, stuck the fork in the ground, and leaned on the handle. “My grandaddy died in a tractor accident. Daddy died in a car accident. Daisy’s high school sweetheart died in an accident too. Poppy’s sweetheart went to New York and never came back. Presley’s daddy took off when she was a baby. It’s a thing whether any of us want to believe it or not.”
“And you? Who did you lose?”
I picked up the fork and went back to my task. “Nobody. Because I wasn’t dumb enough to ever fall in love.”
When he didn’t pick on me, I snuck a look at him, but his face was unreadable.
“What, you never fall in love either?” I asked.
“Hard to fall in love when you’re soulless, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re not soulless.”
A smile. “Gotcha to admit it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Admit you kinda like me.”
“Never in a million years.”
“Admit I’m not the devil, then.”
“Jury’s still out.”
“Then admit you don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I answered, my eyes on my task.
“Admit you kind of understand me.”
At that, I raised my pitchfork and pointed it at him. “Don’t press your luck, buddy.”
Faster than I could track, he grabbed the pitchfork and pulled it in his direction, hauling me toward him with it. He managed to keep the tool out of the way so there was room for me to get close enough that he caught me around the waist. And just like that, I was flush against him, our sweaty skin slick.
“Pressing my luck is my favorite pastime,” he said, smiling down at me from the shade of his cowboy hat. “You like me. Know how I know?”
“You read my diary?”
His smile quirked higher on the one side. “Because I can see it. Looks the same on you as it feels in me.”
I stared at his lips for a heartbeat, then found myself. “I shoulda stabbed you when I had the chance.”
“Probably,” he said.
He was about to kiss me, I realized. And I had no designs to stop him.
The sound of an engine snapped us out of the daze, and we broke apart like an eggshell as Wyatt pulled around the barn in his truck.
“Gimme my pitchfork,” I said, hand extended and heart pounding.
“How about you let me finish your job.” When I didn’t agree, he added, “It’s the only way I can make sure I don’t get stabbed and fed to the pigs.”
I laughed, and he took the response as an invitation to get back to work.
“You should probably put your shirt back on,” he noted.
“Why? Wyatt’s not looking at me, is he?”
“No, but these jeans are tight enough without your cleavage getting involved.”
“Too bad for your nuts, then,” I said cheerily, turning to strut toward Wyatt with no living clue what had just happened.
Or why I wished Wyatt had stayed away for just five more minutes.
The day was long and hot and full of conversation. Once in the hay barn, I was saved from carrying anything by driving a tractor pulling a trailer of whatever Grant had stacked. He looked like a stranger hauling hay with a bandana around the bottom half of his face, sweat sticking his shirt to him in all the right places, his brows drawn in concentration and exertion.
By the time we made it to the pastures, his shirt was hanging from his back pocket. From my perch on the fence, I watched him walk across the field in a hat and jeans, a bandana around his neck and leather gloves on his hands. Sweat and dirt were flecked and smeared across his torso, and he walked like a man who’d done hard work and would do more, that sure and certain swagger of a capable man in his element.
