He rubbed his cheek. “Too many hours in the tractor.”
“Excuse me?”
He dropped his hand. “I was being a jerk about things when you first got here. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have access to the tub if you want.”
As if she could relax naked in hot water with him on the other side of the door.
“Thank you,” she said slowly. “I, uh, might take you up on it. If I had the house to myself.”
“I’m not moving into the bunkhouse.”
“I wasn’t talking permanently. I was only thinking that I’d have a better shot at relaxation if I was alone as opposed to hogging the bathroom.” Because Karl’s old house had only the one.
“Okay. The next time I have a night out, I’ll let you know.”
She allowed herself a smile. “I’m trying hard not to do a happy dance right now.”
“Tomorrow is poker night. I’ll be gone for a while.” He opened the barn door and set the grain bucket inside, then reached out to take the bottle bucket from Taylor.
“You have a poker night?”
“Karl’s friends. I’m taking his place. In return, they take my money.” He gave her a mock-innocent look. “Something wrong with that?”
“No…just that it seems to be at odds with your hermit persona.”
He rolled the barn door shut again with his good hand. “For the record, I’m not a hermit. I just like to choose when I spend time with people. For the past four years I haven’t been able to do that. I’ve not only had to spend time with them, I’ve had to pretend I’m happy doing it.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“I saddled horses, answered questions, refrained from rolling my eyes at the dumb ones.” He gave her a pointed look. “And for the record, there are dumb questions. I liked most of the guests, but…mostly I just wanted to disappear onto my part of the ranch and raise cows and hay.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The technicalities of a handshake agreement.”
Taylor frowned.
“I’ll explain it sometime.”
“Yeah?”
He stopped walking at the place where they would part ways. “Yeah.”
That was…surprising. She wasn’t certain she believed him, but the odd thing was that she wanted to believe him. “What’s stopping you from explaining right now?”
His gaze met hers. “I don’t know. Lack of whiskey, maybe?”
“That bad?”
He gave a short laugh. “No. It’s just…family business and I’m not a great sharer.”
Taylor slipped her thumbs into her back pockets and rocked back on her heels. “When I first met you, I had you pegged as working in the hospitality field.”
He looked almost insulted. “No kidding.”
“You were smooth and I could tell you’d worked with people. I would have guessed that you were a really good sharer. But as I get to know you better, you get rougher around the edges.” She cocked her head. “How does that work?”
“Public me. Real me.”
“You’re good at hiding ‘real you.’”
“Years of practice.”
“But you weren’t ‘public you’ with me for very long.”
“I found you threatening at first. On a number of fronts.”
Taylor lifted her eyebrows. “I find you threatening, too.”
“Yeah?” He easily followed the shift in the subject of conversation. “Still?”
“Things like this don’t dissipate overnight.” This being an attraction that could easily veer out of control. “It’s not that I’m not interested…but damn it, Cole, the timing is all wrong.”
“And you’re all about schedules.”
“At this juncture of my life, I’m all about caution and control. You’re screwing with both of those.”
* * *
TAYLOR HAD TO give Cole points for not messing with her caution and control over the next two days. In fact, she barely saw him. When she got up on Tuesday morning, ready to hit the boneyard, he was out in the field on his tractor. She found a note tacked to her door that read “No work today or tomorrow.”
It felt like a snow day. No farmwork, no temptation. Did it get any better than that?
Taylor parked herself in front of her computer and spent the morning drinking coffee and networking, sending out résumés and touching base with her contacts. Applying for everything she could possibly apply for. When she was done, she went for a run, stopping to admire the new calves playing in the fields across the road from her grandfather’s farm.
The next day she did the same, and when she was done with her run, she went to what was left of her grandmother’s vegetable garden and started thinking about what it would take to put it right again. Cole might be a farmer, but he hadn’t touched the garden. Maybe she should?
Taylor abruptly turned and headed back to the bunkhouse. What was she thinking? Gardens? She had a black thumb, and gardening had never been her thing…but she had enjoyed picking peas and digging carrots—even when she’d become too cool for the farm. There was no reason that she shouldn’t enjoy gardening again—except for the fact that she had no idea how long she was going to be there.
It would take less than six months to plant and harvest…
Great. Just what she needed. A farmer voice whispering in her ear.
To counteract it, Taylor sent a few more emails, accepted an offer for a phone interview the following week, then sent a text to Carolyn. She’d just set down her phone when a knock on the door brought her to her feet.
When she opened the door, Cole was standing a few feet away, covered in powdery dirt. “What happened?”
He looked down at his dusty jeans and T-shirt, then gave a few half-hearted slaps that raised the dust a little. “Chucky got out again. Chased the tractor, tried to go down an old badger hole. I had to lie on my stomach to get him out.”
“And he’s…”
“Back home. Mrs. Clovendale saw he was gone and came out across the field.”
“Sorry to have missed that.”
“Oh, yeah. Chucky’s a lot of fun. I just wanted to remind you that it’s poker night.”
Taylor couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. “I know.”
“You should have at least two hours of privacy. The old guys let me and Dylan win for a while to kind of stretch things out before annihilating us.”
“Could you maybe call before you come back?”
“I could do that.”
“Sometimes I fall asleep in the tub.”
He frowned at her. “No way.”
She smiled dreamily. “I do love my baths.”
Cole blew out a breath and gave her a smile that said, “O-k-a-a-y…” before adding, “I’ll be gone in about an hour.”
“Thanks, Cole.” And she meant that from the bottom of her heart.