The Fall of Shane MacKade (The MacKade Brothers 4)

Her brows shot up. “You get that dirty fixing a rake?”

His dimple flashed. “I’m not talking about a stick with tines on the end, city girl. Been over to the inn?”

“Yes. I met Cassie. She showed me through. She’s going to give me a lift back to Regan’s when I’m ready. Since I was in the neighborhood…” She trailed off and looked back into the pen. “I’ve never seen pigs close up. I wondered what they felt like.”

“Mostly they feel like eating.” Then he smiled again. “They’re bristly,” he told her. “Like a stiff brush. Not very pettable.”

“Oh.” She would have liked to see for herself, but wanted to keep her fingers just as they were. Instead, she turned around and took a long scan of the farm. “It’s quite a place. Why haven’t you planted

anything over there?”

“Land needs to rest for a season now and again.” He glanced toward the fallow field near the woods. “You don’t really want a lecture on crop rotation, do you?”

“Maybe.” She smiled. “But not right now.”

“So…” He laid a hand on the fence beside her. A standard flirtation ploy, Rebecca thought, and told herself she was above such maneuvers. “What do you want?”

“A look around. If I wouldn’t be in your way.” Instinct urged her to hunch her shoulders, shift away, but she kept her chin up and her eyes on his.

“Pretty women aren’t ever in the way.” He took off the bandanna, used it to wipe his hands before sticking it in his pocket. “Come on.”

Before she could evade, or think to, he had her hand in his. The texture of his palm registered. Hard, rough with calluses, strong. As they skirted around a shed, she had a glimpse of a large, dangerous-looking piece of machinery with wicked teeth.

“That’s a rake,” he said mildly.

“What were you doing to it?”

“Fixing it.”

He headed toward the barn. Most city people, he knew, wanted to see a barn. But when they passed the chicken coop, she stopped.

“You raise chickens, too. For eggs?”

“For eggs, sure. And for eating.”

Her skin went faintly green. “You eat your own chickens?”

“Sweetie, at least I know what goes into my own. Why would I pick up a pack of chicken parts at the market?”

She made some sound and looked back over her shoulder, toward the pigpen. Reading her perfectly, Shane grinned. “Want to stay for dinner?”

“No, thank you,” she said faintly.

He just couldn’t help himself. “Ever been to a hog butchering? It’s quite an event. Real social. We usually hold one out here once a year, hook it up with a fund-raiser for the fire department. Hog butchering and all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.”

She pressed a hand to her unsteady stomach. “You’re making that up.”

“Nope. You haven’t tasted sausage until—”

“I’m thinking about becoming a vegetarian,” she said quickly, but pulled herself together. “That was nicely done, farm boy.”

“It was a little too hard to resist.” Appreciating her quick recovery, he gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You had this look in your eyes like you were calculating every squeal and cluck, filing it away somewhere for a report on the average American farm.”

“Maybe I was.” She shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand so that she could study his face. He really was a most remarkable-looking male. “Details interest me. So do reports. Enough details, and you have a report. A good report equals a clear picture.”

“Seems to me somebody who’s into details, reports and clear pictures wouldn’t be out chasing ghosts.”

“If scientists hadn’t been interested in explaining the unknown, you’d still be working your land with a stone ax and offering sacrifices to the sun god.”