Chapter Nine
Damn it, Grayson thought the next morning as he rubbed down his horse after a particularly grueling ride, he'd all but worked the two of them into the ground the day before, but it hadn't made a bit of difference.
He still wanted Lori more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. So much that even though she'd made him another fabulous dinner and then breakfast, both times he'd told her he couldn't stop working long enough to eat with her and that he'd grab the leftovers when he could.
And later, when she'd said that she was worried about the cat not eating much, after he'd told her Mo was lucky to still be here at all, she'd glared at him and turned on her heel without another word.
"Grayson?" Lori poked her head into the stables. She'd been fearless everywhere else on his farm, but she never ventured too close to his horses. "You just got a call from Eric. He said he's going to need to come an hour early tonight to pick up the boxes of food. What do you need me to do to help with that?"
Grayson barely bit back a curse. So much for avoiding Lori today, too. In order to get all of the food together in time, the two of them would have to work together. And work well.
"I need you to go into the storeroom and pull out the cartons so that we can fill them. Lay them out across the tables inside the barn. You'll have to stack them two deep."
"How many should I pull out?"
"I've got two hundred and fifteen subscribers, but we'll make an extra dozen." People sometimes needed an additional box or two, plus he liked Eric to do a few free drop-offs at the end of every pick-up day with whatever was left.
"Got it." She turned immediately to take care of the work that needed to be done, but it wasn't until she was gone that he realized something had been different.
She hadn't smiled. Or done or said anything to get a rise out of him. She'd simply given him the message, then asked him what needed to be done. It was exactly what he'd told her he wanted from her. And yet, it felt wrong.
He tried to push the crazy thought out of his head, but by the time he joined her in the barn and saw the incredibly fast progress she'd made - along with the slightly dimmer light in her eyes - he couldn't help but feel like a total ass for not only being so hard on her, but also for going out of his way to avoid her.
Was she upset about having to eat alone? Was she thinking he was an ogre about the cat? Or did it have nothing to do with him at all and she simply missed her family...or whoever else she had run from to come to his farm?
The thought of Lori with another man was like a hard punch straight to the gut. He couldn't let himself have her, but Lord, he couldn't stand the thought of anyone else touching her, either. Not when, despite her resilience, he couldn't help but see the sweet vulnerability in her eyes when she was exhausted enough to accidentally let down her guard.
She quickly picked up on his plan for that week's box and they worked silently together to pick the remaining strawberries, artichokes, asparagus, peas, and squash. After a short while, Lori started to arrange each of the boxes in a way that Grayson had to admit was far more pleasing to the eye than the way he normally laid everything out for his customers. He could only imagine how happy everyone would be when they picked up their produce this week, likely even more inspired to go home and start cooking up and eating the bounty with their families.
Because of Lori.
When he was done picking the fresh fruit and veggies for the week, he moved to the other side of the table to help her put together the rest of the boxes and said, "These are looking great."
A smile, maybe, or if he was really lucky, some laughter. That was what he'd expected her to respond with. Anything but a head that stayed down as she simply nodded and kept filling boxes.
"Lori - "
Shit, he didn't even know what he wanted to say to her, just that it had to be something. Anything to bring back the smile he was getting way too used to seeing...and the motormouth that had started to sound better than any symphony he'd ever heard.
Her hands immediately stilled and when she finally looked up at him, he hated the shadows in her eyes.
"What is it, Grayson?"
Four crisp words were all he warranted now. "I wanted to say - " When he paused to try to get a grip, he saw the hope light up in her eyes.
"Go ahead," she said with a soft curving of her lips that held him entranced. "I'm listening."
But everything he wanted to say, everything he needed to tell her, got stuck in his throat. And in the end, all that came out of his mouth was, "If you're tired, I can finish up."
Just as quickly as she'd opened herself back up to him, she shut down, looking at the artichoke in her hand rather than up at him.
"I'm not tired." She took off her cowboy hat, then, and hung it from a nail on the wall.
Her taking off the hat felt like an omen, a bad one. Where he'd wanted to yank it off and toss it into the street the day before, now he wanted to pick it up and jam it back down onto her head.
But before he could say or do anything more, he heard the crunch of tires over the gravel on the drive. Eric walked into the barn a minute later. "Hey, Grayson, sorry about the schedule change today." When he saw Lori, the usually taciturn young farmer broke out into a huge grin. "You must be Lori."
She grinned at Eric in exactly the way she hadn't been smiling at him as they shook hands. "It's so nice to meet you, Eric. And thanks for your suggestions about what else to try feeding Sweetpea. I'm going to try the liver tonight. I'll let you know how it goes."
What the hell? First she was lighting up for Eric and then it turned out that they'd already swapped cat-feeding tips with each other? Had she also told Eric what an ass her boss had been since the second she'd signed on as his farmhand?
"Wow," Eric commented when he looked at the boxes of produce, "these look great this week." His smile was all for Lori. "Must have needed a woman's touch."
Without a word to either of them, Grayson started carrying the boxes over to Eric's truck. Lori and Eric chatted like old friends the entire time, with Eric happily answering each of Lori's rapid-fire questions. "So how do the pick-ups work? Is there a check-off list? Do you know everyone? Are they all locals or do they come from other towns? Do people bring their kids and pets and hang out or are they just in and out?"
Telling himself this was the perfect way to get her out of his hair, Grayson cut off Eric halfway into his lengthy explanation of how the evening's pick-up would work. "Go and see for yourself."
He didn't have to offer twice, as Eric and Lori immediately grinned at each other and said, "Great!" at the same time.
Grayson's hands would have fisted had he not been carrying three heavy boxes stacked on top of one another. Eric and Lori were perfect together. Both of them had a ready smile. Both of them could talk your ear off for hours. They even looked good together, Eric blond and muscular next to Lori's dark-haired grace.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Eric said to Grayson when he finally managed to yank his gaze away from Lori. "A journalist called right before I came over here. He's doing a story on the popularity of CSAs, but when I told him that I'm just the pick-up guy he asked if you could give him a call back." Eric reached into the front pocket of his jeans. "I've got his number here."
"I don't need the number."
Lori frowned at him as Eric asked, "You sure? He sounded like a nice guy, even told me that he'd heard about your CSA from several people who said you're running the best one in the area."
"I'm not interested in press, thanks." Grayson couldn't stand the thought of anyone poking into his past, not when he could guess how fast the story would turn from one about his farm and CSA into a "tragic" story of love and loss. He had never spoken to anyone about his story, and he never planned to. Putting the final boxes into Eric's truck, he said, "Looks like you're all set to go."
"I'll make sure to bring Lori back safe and sound in a couple of hours."
Grayson barely kept himself from growling that Eric had better do just that or he'd make sure the other man paid for it.
Lori was just leaving the barn when she suddenly turned around and grabbed the cowboy hat off the nail. When she plopped it back on her head, Eric grinned at her and said, "Great hat."
"Thank you." Her smile at his compliment was so bright it could have lit up the entire town.
And as Grayson watched them get into Eric's truck and then drive away, he wondered what in the hell he was doing sending her off alone with Eric. It wasn't that he thought the other man would do anything to hurt her or frighten her. On the contrary, Eric was a good-looking young guy. He didn't have any issues, didn't have any reasons not to make a play for Lori and hope that she played, too.
* * *
The two hours that Grayson spent working with his hammer on the new cottage roof, so hard and fast that his shoulder ached, didn't bring him any closer to erasing the way Lori had smiled at Eric. And when Grayson finally heard the truck come back up the drive, he was hard pressed not to yank her out of it and claim her as his once and for all with a kiss that would have both of them forgetting anything but how good they could be together.
Of course, Eric came around and helped her out of his truck like a gentleman. She gave him a hug good-bye and then stood in the driveway and waved as he drove away. Her smile was still intact as she said, "That was so much fun!"
Grayson's heart swelled in his chest at seeing her so happy, even if he hadn't been the one to make her that way. But when she finally looked up and realized he was standing by the side of the barn watching her, her smile fell away.
"I can't believe you don't do the pick-up here," she said, evidently no longer giving him the silent treatment. "Your customers are the neatest people and they're so grateful for the food you grow for them. Don't you want the satisfaction of seeing how happy they are - or at least give them a chance to say thank you?"
She'd only been back for sixty seconds and already she was laying into him. How could he have been upset about her earlier moratorium on chatting?
Knowing she was going to keep glaring at him until he answered, he told her, "I'm too busy."
She made a sound of disbelief. A loud one. "You can't spare two hours once a week to actually interact with your customers and community, but Eric told me you give away free food to people who can't afford to subscribe to your CSA every single week." She shook her head. "I don't understand you at all, Grayson. Not even a little bit." With that, she headed inside the house and slammed the door.
The sick truth was that he didn't understand himself, either, didn't know how he could be feeling what he was feeling for her so quickly. She'd only been with him for a few days, and had pushed every one of his buttons repeatedly - and likely on purpose - more than half the time.
Not only was he torn between wanting to strangle her and wanting to kiss her, but frankly, he wasn't sure which was going to happen first.
Although when he finally walked back into his house and found Lori curled up on the couch sneezing her head off with Mo on her lap as she tried to coax her to "just take one more teeny-tiny bite of the super yummy liver," anyone with half a brain would have placed their bets on kissing.
Which was why he immediately grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter and headed straight for the local bar to watch a game he wasn't interested in and eat a burger that tasted like sawdust, making sure he didn't return to the house until he could be sure Lori was asleep.
It was long past midnight when he finally headed up his driveway, and when he saw that her bedroom light was still on, he was suddenly hit with the crazy urge to rewind the past six hours - hell, the past several days - so that he could get things right with her this time.
Only, as soon as he got out of his truck, she turned off her bedroom light.