Always on My Mind (The Sullivans #8)

Chapter Two

The door flew open and the driver got out. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! That chicken came out of nowhere. I'll fix your fence."

Grayson heard what she said, but couldn't manage a response. Not when he couldn't believe his eyes.

He'd never seen a woman this beautiful in all his life. Long, dark hair spilled down over her nearly bare shoulders to her waist, and her big eyes, high cheekbones, and full, red mouth were every man's wet dream. She was wearing something tight and soft looking and in the sunlight it was almost as if she were na**d with every one of her spectacular curves on display.

And those legs...even though she wasn't particularly tall they went on forever, ending in spike heels that had no place whatsoever on a farm.

Shit. What the hell was wrong with him? Even if it had been a while since he'd taken a woman to bed, he'd never had any problems controlling his reaction to one.

"Who are you?"

She blinked up at him and simply stared for a few moments, before her gorgeous lips finally curved up into a smile.

Grayson silently instructed his heart to keep beating, his chest to keep pumping air. He just needed to survive the next few minutes, send her on her way, and then his life could go back to the way it needed to be.

Quiet.

Simple.

Completely devoid of gorgeous women with smiles that knocked him flat.

She was clutching a piece of paper in her hand and she uncrumpled it before answering, "The new farmhand, I hope."

Another man might have laughed at her ridiculous statement.

He didn't.

"Who put you up to this?"

She frowned. "No one." She took a step toward him and he nearly took a step backward in response to all those luscious curves coming nearer. "I'm here to apply for the job." She smiled again. "My name is Lori. Lori Sullivan."

Was she really serious? He schooled himself to forget how pretty she was as he studied her earnest expression.

Crap. It looked like she was. Which meant that instead of only wasting five minutes of his day, it was likely going to take him a good half hour to get her out of here.

"Is Grayson around somewhere?" She looked around him for someone else.

"I'm Grayson."

Her eyes widened. "Why aren't you older?"

He had no idea how to respond to that. Not, of course, that he'd had much of an idea how to respond to any of the conversation he'd had thus far with the stunning woman who had blown into his life without even the slightest hint of warning.

Instead of answering her strange question, he told her, "My ad wasn't a joke."

"I'm not joking," she said with a stubborn tilt of her chin.

His heart raced again from nothing more than seeing the flush in her cheeks while she stood her ground in front of him.

"Look, I've got a lot of work to take care of today before the sun sets." He gave a pointed look at the fence post. "Like fixing the post you smashed into, for one."

Anyone else would have left by then, given the way he was snarling at her, but did this beautiful girl get the hint and get back in her car to leave him the hell alone?

No.

Instead of leaving, she took another step toward him on the most gorgeous pair of legs he'd ever seen in his life. "I can help you."

He made himself sweep a hard, unimpressed look over her, even though in his previous life he would have drunk her in with extreme pleasure.

"What experience do you have working on a farm?"

When she bit her lower lip, his blood pressure shot so high he could actually hear it rushing in his ears over the ongoing complaints of his chickens, who were still in high excitement over the car, the crash, and the very unexpected visitor in her glittering outfit.

"Well," she said slowly, "none yet. But I'm very determined."

He laughed out loud at that, a rusty sound that held absolutely no pleasure in it.

"Determination isn't going to get the new coop finished or the fence post replaced. I need someone who can actually do the work I need them to do." Jesus, he couldn't believe he was actually standing here debating her qualifications with her. "You can't be my new farmhand."

She looked momentarily distraught as she stared at him and then back down at his want ad clutched in her fist. He could almost hear the gears churning in her pretty head, before she nodded as if she'd made a decision.

"Tell me something you need done and I'll do it. Right now, in front of you, so you can see that I'm serious." She faced him squarely. "I want this job, Grayson."

The sound of his name on her lips, her slightly husky voice playing out the vowels a little longer than the other letters, made his gut clench tight. He didn't like the way he was reacting to her.

Didn't like the fact that he was reacting at all.

He looked down pointedly at her shoes. "You're telling me that you're going to get to work on my farm in those?"

She glanced down at her sparkly high heels as if she'd forgotten she was wearing them. How, he wondered, could she have possibly forgotten when her feet had to be killing her?

She shrugged. "Sure. So what do you want me to do?"

He scowled as he scanned his property for something she could try to do without hurting herself, since he couldn't waste the time it would take to get her to the doctor. Still, it looked like the thirty-minute delay had just turned into an hour. At least.

* * *

First chance she got, Lori was going to give that kid at the General Store a piece of her mind. Why hadn't he told her that Grayson was not only young, but also one of the most ridiculously good looking and virile men she'd ever set eyes on?

Not, of course, that she'd asked, but she could guarantee that if the sandwich maker had been a teenage girl, she wouldn't have forgotten to mention those very important details.

Only, it didn't matter that he was good looking, did it? Not when she was completely done with men.

Done.

She didn't trust them anymore, not one single man that she wasn't already related to. They were all cheating, manipulative scum. Still, it wasn't exactly easy to remember all of that when she was standing in front of two hundred pounds of muscle, piercing brown eyes, and a square jaw liberally dusted with dark stubble that any woman in her right mind would want to reach out to run her fingertips over right before she leaned in for a ki -

Lori forcefully shook the thought out of her head. Okay, so maybe the second she set eyes on the magnificent Grayson she should have climbed right back into her car and gotten the heck out of there. After leaving her insurance information for the busted fence, of course. But it had felt like every word out of his mouth was a challenge.

And Lori had never been able to back down from a challenge.

"So," she said, "what's first on your list?"

Just as she asked the question, a chicken decided to peck at one of the sparkles on her shoes. She tried to step out of the way, but it just followed her and pecked harder at her foot.

"Pick up the hen and put her in the coop."

She knew the joke was supposed to be on her, that he thought she was going to screw this up, but how hard could it be to pick up a chicken?

"Sure, no problem."

As Lori squatted and reached for the small body, the chicken was so focused on trying to eat her shoe-sparkle that she didn't have any trouble getting her hands around its middle. Only, just as she was about to actually lift the bird off the ground, it looked up at her with alarm, squawked its displeasure, then wriggled out of her hands and started running in the opposite direction.

She didn't think before muttering a curse word as she stood up to go after the hen. "Come here, you," she said in what was supposed to be a soothing voice, but was tinged with more than a little frustration. "Time to go back into your coop."

When she was only a couple of feet from the bird, she made herself wait until it focused on something crawling on the drive before reaching for it again. But it was smarter about her intention this time and before she could even get a hand on its feathers, it let out another loud cry, then half-flew, half-ran away from her.

Lori brushed her hair out of her eyes. She was sweating now and had dirt smudged across the front of her top and along her tights. But she wasn't even close to giving up. No sir. If Grayson thought this was enough to send her packing, he was sorely mistaken.

She was already heading after the chicken again when Grayson cut her off at the pass. "I can't let you upset her any more than you already have. It'll throw off her laying cycle."

"I didn't mean to upset her," Lori protested, immediately feeling guilty about having done irreparable damage to the chicken's egg production.

He reached down to pick up the hen, and rather than reach for its tail or wings, he cupped his hands in a gentle V on either side of its body and lifted it. With one hand firmly under the chicken, he used the other to hold it close to his body as he carried it into the coop.

Well, she thought with more than a little irritation, he could have told her how to do that before she screwed up the hen's life. While his back was turned, she bent down and reached for another chicken. This time around, it was a different - and much happier - story as she scooped up the hen and carried it over to the coop.

Grayson turned around just as she was about to put the chicken inside. "What the hell are you doing?"

She stopped right where she was and gathered the bird a little closer to her chest. The warmth of the plump body against her helped soften the sting of Grayson's fierce glare.

"I figured you wanted all the chickens inside," she said in a voice pitched low so that she wouldn't spook her new feathered friend. "Didn't you?"

"Yes," he bit out, but his frown deepened rather than clearing. "How'd you pick her up?"

Wasn't it obvious? "I watched what you did."

He moved his glare from her to the chicken and she felt a little sorry for bringing the bird into this.

"Fine. Put her in the coop and then collect the rest. I've got to see how badly your car damaged my fence."

This time, Lori was the one scowling at Grayson's too-broad, far-too-muscular back. So much for getting a thank you or maybe even a little bit of praise for how easily she'd managed to rectify things with the chickens. It was, she thought, a very good reminder that it was never a good idea to do something to try to please a man.

Still, she didn't let her frustration with him impact her gentle handling of the chicken. Or the next dozen of them. Unfortunately, even though she knew what she was doing now, it didn't mean the chickens necessarily felt like cooperating. And she had to admit her heels weren't exactly the best footwear for a muddy, gravelly, grassy farm, as the spikes kept getting stuck in the sod. Fortunately, she spotted a plastic dish with what looked like dried corn in it that the chickens seemed to have an inordinate interest in. Picking up the dish, she shook the "treats" and was thrilled when the rest of the chickens came running in at top speed toward the coop. Moments later she had them all safely inside.

All but one, darn it. She responded neither to the treats nor the actions of the rest of her chicken friends.

After the hen dodged her one too many times, Lori kicked off her shoes and, with renewed determination, used her years of quietly gliding across a stage to stalk the chicken.

"Aha! Gotcha!" she exclaimed when she finally had it safe and sound in her arms. The chicken let out a matching sound that had her laughing out loud. "Had a good time messing with me, did you?"

She was almost at the coop when she looked up and saw Grayson staring at her with such an expression of shock that she almost stumbled with the chicken in her arms.

"What's wrong?" She looked down at her feet. "Is there a snake in the grass?" She couldn't keep the horror from her voice as she went completely still.

"No," he said quickly, "there isn't a snake."

"Thank God." She let out a harsh breath, utterly exhausted from the past twenty minutes of chasing chickens on top of her red-eye flight and sleepless night. Heading again for the coop, she took every barefoot step only after careful consideration of the ground in front of her. "I'll just go put her in the coop and then you can tell me what you want me to do next."