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Bernie dragged her gaze away from the devastatingly handsome man and focused on Gerard.
Her assigned protector was a man whose face wore a scowl more often than a smile and who looked like he could rip a man’s head off with his teeth. Well over six feet tall, his larger-than-life presence didn’t intimidate her as she was sure he would other women. Instead, he was a calming influence that kept her grounded at the same time he kept her knotted inside.
When he’d touched her arm, she’d felt a shock of awareness. It had passed through her body like a lightning bolt, warming places that had been cold for too long, igniting a flame beneath her long-doused desire, making her want something more than the life she’d been living for the past three years.
As soon as the thought filled her brain, she realized how foolish it was to think a man like Gerard would be at all interested in a widow who spent ninety-nine percent of her time growing things and taking care of animals. She had little time for herself, much less anyone else. To pay her bills and keep food on the table, she had to work.
Besides, he’d only touched her arm out of a friendly concern. And surely it had been a fluke. A bodily reaction stemming from the stress of finding a foot on her property. What were the chances she’d have the same reaction if he touched her again?
Gerard leaned close and touched her arm again. “Bernie, are you all right?” His breath stirred the loose tendrils of hair around her ear, making her shiver with awareness.
When she didn’t respond immediately, his hand found the small of her back.
Lightning ripped through her senses, blasting heat throughout her body, coiling tightly around her core. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice breathy, not at all her usual firm, confident tone. “I’m just a little off balance by everything that’s happened.” She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and shot a glance around at the men gathered around her in a semi-circle. “Follow me, and we can get started dismantling and loading the panels.”
She led the men to the back side of the barn where the portable panels were standing where they’d been for the past four or five years. Weeds grew around them. What once had been a dirt lunging pen for horses was now filled with waist-high grass she hadn’t bothered to mow because other chores took priority, like feeding animals, planting, tilling and harvesting crops.
Bernie waved a hand toward the panels. “There’s a toolbox in the tack room. You’ll need something to help you loosen the clamps holding the panels together. I’ll bring the tractor and trailer around for you to stack the panels on.” Bernie spun on her heels and headed into the barn.
Gerard followed, his mere presence keeping her pulse racing erratically. She couldn’t function this way. She needed distance between herself and Gerard.
Bernie stopped. “You don’t have to help me. I can do this myself. I’ve hooked up utility trailers to the tractor and my trucks for years. I can almost do it with my eyes closed.” Okay, that was stretching the truth a bit. She just didn’t want him to dog her every footstep or touch her again.
He was little more than a stranger, and she shouldn’t be feeling anything but gratitude for his kindness.
They had bigger problems than her non-existent sex life. She had a crop to harvest and a mystery to solve.
She didn’t have time to moon over a giant of a man who made her feel again.
He needed to go away and let her get her head on straight. She didn’t need a protector. The sheriff’s department and state crime lab would be enough to solve this case.
She wasn’t even sure who or what she was supposed to be kept safe from.
So, they’d found a foot in the pigpen. That didn’t automatically equate to danger to herself or her animals. She had a rifle, a shotgun and a handgun, and she wasn’t afraid to use them.
As soon as the state crime lab team left, she’d send Gerard on his way and get her life back on its normal track.
Usually an optimist, the series of events Bernie had endured over the past five or six years had left her cautious and determined to be independent. She never wanted to depend on a man for physical contact or emotional support. It had hurt too much when she’d lost Ray. Bernie wasn’t sure she would survive another such loss.
In her mind, it was settled. Once they had the pigs moved into the temporary corral, Gerard could leave. Then Bernie could get back to her life and quit having those flashes of heat stealing through her every time he touched her. In time, she might stop craving those touches.
Chapter 3
Gerard retrieved the tools from the barn and went to work with his team dismantling the corral panels.
Bernie disappeared for a few minutes. The rumbling sound of an engine starting made Gerard abandon the team and go in search of her.
Though she’d insisted she could hitch the trailer to the tractor by herself, Gerard knew from experience it was easier to hook up a trailer with two people—one driving, the other directing from the ground.
He found Bernie perched on an ancient red tractor, making a circle in the barnyard. She slowed to a stop, shifted gears into reverse and backed toward a long flatbed trailer parked in the middle of a row of various tractor implements.
Gerard hurried forward and stopped beside the trailer hitch. “A little more to your left,” he called out.
She adjusted her direction accordingly, backing slowly toward him until she was as close as he needed to match the trailer hitch to the ball on the back of the tractor.
Gerard pulled the hitch, trailer and all, until it was directly over the ball and cranked the handle, lowering the trailer hitch until it covered the ball. He continued cranking until the jack beneath the hitch was up as high as it would go. Then he locked the hitch in place, stepped back and gave Bernie a thumbs-up.
While she drove the tractor and trailer around to the back of the barn, he kept pace on foot, arriving at the same time.
