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Loren grew somber. “Well…Cooper’s been so busy I didn’t want to bother him with that task, so I did this instead.”
Sensing a sudden tension in the air, Jo Ellen opened her mouth, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to ask exactly. She just wanted to know what trouble lay between Loren and Cooper that hadn’t been there ten years ago.
“Sometimes a man can be a lot like a farm,” Loren said in a conversational tone as she started for the back door of her house. “He lets his heart lay fallow for a while, and instead of his feelings dying out, they just go dormant, his emotions growing deeper and stronger as time passes. A person only needs to clear away the weeds on the surface to uncover them.”
Jo Ellen didn’t comment but she didn’t think she needed to. When Loren glan
ced back, Jo Ellen nodded to let Cooper’s mother know she had received the message.
Whatever heartbreak lay between mother and son, Loren definitely wasn’t removed enough from Cooper to warn a girl not to hurt her baby boy.
Jo Ellen fell quiet as Loren piled snacks into her arms. She wasn’t certain if Mama Bear had been warning her away or encouraging her, but she was certain she felt worse than ever about how her night with Cooper had ended. She wanted him to get hurt from whatever it was they were starting less than she wanted herself to get hurt.
Even as she worried, though, her skin tingled as she neared the barn, remembering how he’d looked first thing this morning in the hayloft, his bare golden shoulders glistening in the early sunlight as he slept wrapped up in the sleeping bag they’d made love in.
Warmth spread through her. Juggling the loaded plate and thirty-two ounce cup of iced tea Loren had piled on her, she trooped to the large opened barn doors and peered in, only to find him on the ground floor, standing half in and half out of a combine with his torso buried inside its guts. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she silently watched him work.
“Snack time,” she called.
He jolted and whacked his head on the inside of half-lifted hood.
She winced. “Sorry.”
Rubbing his noggin as he ducked out from under the raised engine cover, he stared at her, and then glanced at her filled arms before pressing his lips into a hard line. “My mother sent you.”
She wrinkled her brow as she approached. “You weren’t kidding when you said she keeps you well fed.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He hurried to relieve her of the cup and plate. “Thanks.”
“Is…is everything okay between you and Loren?” she asked the hesitant question as she watched him drain half of his iced tea.
Lowering the cup, he sent her a look that flickered with warning but immediately disappeared.
“Yeah. Fine,” he said, his voice flat with emotion, telling her things were far from fine. But if he didn’t want to talk about it, she wasn’t going to press. She had other issues to discuss.
He jerked his gaze away. “Have a seat,” he offered, motioning toward a pile of two huge tractor tires stacked on top of each other and lying on their sides.
She smiled at the faux seating and settled down. He eased beside her and ate a cookie as they sat silently, each staring at the combine before them.
Squeezing her hands together in her lap, Jo Ellen studied the combine with more attention than she’d ever given a piece of farm equipment before. Cooper’s presence filled the rest of her senses until she remembered what he’d been doing before she had interrupted him.
She frowned with worry. “Is it broken?”
“Naw,” he said around a mouthful. “I was just doing a checkup. The corn will be ready to pick soon, probably early next week if not before then. So I switched out the header this morning to prepare, and I figured I might as well tinker some more, make sure nothing looks like it might break its first day out.”
She nodded, staring up at the overgrown tractor. “These things are bigger than I realized. They seem enormous far away, but they’re even taller in person.” She stood to approach it. “I don’t think I’ve actually been this close to one before.” The tires alone stood as tall as she did.
Cooper set his plate of cookies down, wiped the crumbs off on his thighs and wandered up beside her. “Want to climb up and check out the inside of the cab?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
When she reached for the railing of the ladder, however, he reared back, glancing at her legs. “You’re wearing a skirt,” he said as if he’d just then noticed.
“I know.” She stepped up onto the first rung. “I wasn’t paying much attention when I packed for my trip here and I ended up shoving more skirts than shorts into my bags.”
He grasped her waist, steadying her, when she took her second step. The heat from his fingers scorched her.
“Are you sure you can climb wearing this thing.” With another glance at her bare exposed legs, he eyed her like a hungry buck spying a doe during the rut.
