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Why did the low growl in his tone hit me right in the gut?
But more than that, why was I actually looking forward to watching him prove me wrong?
Chapter Five
JAMESON
Well, that backfired. Here I was, thinking I’d help him out and shovel some shit for the day so we could get back to the house and start working on putting together our first song. Instead, we worked until sundown, both of us exhausted by the time we walked through the door.
My back was screaming in agony from the repetitive motion of scraping out each stall and replacing the hay with a fresh clean layer. How did he do this all day long? Had I just gone soft after years of letting everyone else take care of moving gear for me and handling the manual labor? Was he right?
I gritted my teeth at that last one. Killian might be the sexiest man I’d ever met, but I would not let him be right about me. I wasn’t pampered and spoiled. Out of touch with the real world. I’d been through plenty of hard stuff in my life. Done my time hauling gear and killing myself night after night on tour.
“So,” Killian said, half-hearted at best, “you ready to write?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Fuck no. I’m ready for a beer and my bed. Not necessarily in that order.”
Sitting down hard on the stairs, I pulled the boots from my feet and let them fall where they did, not giving a rat’s arse about politeness. I’d clean it up later.
“You okay, old man?”
“Call me that again and see where it gets you.”
“If you’re having a heart attack or a stroke, I should call Doc. Those first hours are crucial, you know.”
“Leave me here to die.”
A warm chuckle filled the air around me, pulling my focus from the ache in my lower back to the soft blue eyes twinkling with mirth. “You’re not gonna die. But you sure do sound a hell of a lot like me after my first week mucking stalls.”
“You can’t honestly tell me you enjoy doing that kind of work every day.”
He shrugged, then held out a hand to help me up. Fuck, when our palms touched, we both tensed a little. But I shook it off and pretended like he didn’t just make me harder than anyone had in a long bloody time.
“I don’t do that work every day. That was the first time I’ve mucked out a stall in…over a month.”
“What?” Shock raced through my veins. “I thought you ‘had to work your family’s land’ or some such nonsense?”
“I do. I just don’t do it by shoveling horse shit anymore. We pay people for that.”
“Are you paying me?”
“You’re staying at my house for free, aren’t you?”
I opened my mouth to protest but shut it again. He had a point.
“So, what kind of work do you do here?”
He dragged a hand through his dark hair. “Right now? A whole lot of nothing aside from take up space. Until today. I’m supposed to be helping with branding and social media, but everything I touch goes up in flames lately.”
