Best Friend's Ex Box Set

"Good question," I replied not knowing how to answer. "I'm not sure; I think it's because we want to make sure we understand things. I don't know. Maybe we're just dumb."

"You're hilarious, English," she said without a trace of laughter in her voice. Then she sighed and quietly said, "I hate it here. I want out, too."

"Then why don't you just leave?" I asked. We were walking more quickly now and I was afraid that Honor was going to suddenly take off and run, and something about the prospect of her running off made me worried.

"Are you kidding me?" she said incredulously. "Who’s going to take care of Danny if I go? Who’s going to make sure the house is tended to? Who’s going to milk the cows and feed the hens? I've got responsibilities, English."

"I'm sorry about your parents," I said quietly.

"Yeah, thanks," she said, nodding as she walked a little faster. I couldn't see her face, but I did notice her raise a hand to her face and quickly wipe it across her eyes, but I said nothing. As we got closer to the house, I watched as she lifted her head and squared her shoulders before saying, "I guess we all have our place in the world, don't we? Mine must be here."

"You can still—" I began.

"Thanks for the talk, English," she said brusquely as she turned and headed toward the barn.

"Thanks for the walk, Honor," I called as she disappeared into the big, white building. I stood there staring at the door she'd gone in, wondering what she'd meant when she said she wanted out, too.

Chapter Nineteen

Grace

"Mr. Wall—Adam, are you okay?" I called from the porch where I sat peeling the potatoes Verity needed for dinner. It was a warm afternoon, but porch provided shade and the afternoon breeze made it quite pleasant. I'd watched Adam and Honor walking back up the road toward the house and wondered what they were talking about. Honor was a tough nut to crack, so if Adam had found a way to communicate with her, I was grateful.

"Yeah, fine," he said turning toward me. In his dress shirt, gray pinstripe pants, and fancy shoes, he looked completely out of place on our Amish homestead, and even more handsome than he'd seemed laying on the couch in the front room. His broad shoulders stretched his shirt to its outer limits, and with the two top buttons undone, he looked more than a bit like the models from some of the edgier clothing line ads in the magazines I had sent to my apartment back in the city. "Grace?"

"What?" I said.

"I asked if you needed any help with the potatoes," he said with a lazy grin as if he knew what I'd been thinking.

"All good!" I replied a little too cheerfully as I looked down and tried to hide the blush that I could feel spreading across my cheeks. I'd dated several men in Chicago, and I'd even gotten somewhat serious about one of them, but that had fizzled when he'd accepted a job in New York. We'd both agreed that a long distance relationship was more than we wanted to try and maintain, so we'd wished each other well and parted friends. That seemed to be where all the men in my life wound up, somewhere deep in the friend-zone. I told myself it was because of my upbringing and that once I'd worked my way through the teenage years I'd missed out on, I'd be ready to find a real partner. But in the six years I'd been living in the city, I hadn't found anyone who had made me feel like this English stranger did.

"Grace?" Adam said as he leaned forward in the chair next to me on the porch.

"Where did you come from?" I asked startled by his presence. "You were just out in the yard!"

"Um, I walked over and climbed the steps and took a seat," he said looking at me quizzically. "I thought you saw me."

"No, I was..." I trailed off.

"Daydreaming about how good I'd look in clean clothes and after having shaved?" he said with another half-smile that set my pulse racing again and that frustrated me. Adam Wallace was rather arrogant and he reminded me of the men in the accounting business who assumed I was a secretary rather than a CPA. As soon as they realized they'd made a mistake, they'd compound the problem by then flirting with me. The difference with Adam was that I felt myself responding to his flirtation and that confused me.

"You're mighty full of yourself, aren't you?" I asked as I turned my attention back to the potatoes and started peeling.

"I don't know that I'm so much full of myself as I am confident," he said as he leaned back and began rocking.

"Confidence, arrogance, tomato, tomat-oh," I said.

"Now that's not very nice of you," Adam said as he looked away. "But then I guess you country girls don't have to worry so much about manners, do you?"

"Wow, you've really set your sights on insulting me," I said feeling my frustration welling up and threatening to spill over.

"No, I'm just making an observation about the way in which you're being rude to me," he said turning back to face me. There was something about the way he looked at me that sparked a primal desire in me. It was complicated by the fact that right now I wanted to both punch him and kiss him.

"I'm being rude to you?" I said as I shot up out of the chair, sending the potatoes in my lap rolling across the porch. "I'm not the rude one! You were rude to me the other night before I even opened my mouth!"

"You're really quite volatile," he said as he winced and pushed himself out of the chair and began gathering the rollaway potatoes.

"I'm not volatile, I'm just annoyed by the fact that you keep making these assumptions about me, but you never ask any questions," I said yanking a potato out of his hand. "You come down here all high and mighty expecting that the country folk will just bend to your will and do your bidding. We may be plain folk, Mr. Wallace, but we're not stupid!"