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.

Chapter Ten

Grayson had obviously had breakfast by the time Lori woke up—a little late, due to the fact that she’d been waiting up to make sure he got home safe and sound after the way he’d barged out of the house the night before. She ate quickly, then went outside to feed the chickens and collect their eggs. When she was done, she headed into the pigpen.

“Hey, Chase,” she said to one of her favorite pigs. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

The pigs acted almost like puppies as they snuffled at her new boots and came for pats on the head. There were seven of them, so she’d decided to name them after her brothers and sister. And since Grayson was off somewhere doing secret farmer things that she’d likely have to pry out of him with a crowbar if she was interested enough, she talked to them the way she would have talked with her siblings.

“Pretty amazing how beautiful it is when the sun sets here, isn’t it?” she told the pig she’d named after her photographer brother. “Probably wish your hooves weren’t so dirty so you could pick up a camera and capture it, don’t you?” She could have sworn the pig nodded.

She was refilling the water troughs as the fastest pig raced over for a drink, reminding her of her car-racing brother Zach. “There was the most beautiful classic Ford truck on Main Street yesterday. Wouldn’t it be great to go zipping down the farm road in the middle of the night, under a full moon, pedal to the metal?” Just as her brother Zach would have, he ignored her and kept on drinking.

She grinned as she picked up the bag of feed and the oldest pig of the bunch kept a watchful eye on her, letting the younger ones feed first. “You’re definitely Marcus,” she said, her heart tugging hard as she thought about how much her oldest brother, who owned a winery in Napa Valley, would love the rolling hills of Pescadero. “Maybe you should give some thought to convincing Grayson to put in some grapes out here, too.” The pig simply kept a calm watch over the rest of his motley crew.

Talking to the pigs like this didn’t make her miss her family any less, but it kept her smiling. And she knew that was the most important thing right now. Especially when the only actual person she had to talk to was little better than working and living with a ghost.

She didn’t know how he did it—how he managed to be so big and yet so silent, so domineering and yet invisible, all at the same time. In some ways, Grayson reminded her of her twin sister Sophie. Soph could slip in and out of a room and notice absolutely everything in it without anyone being the wiser.

Lori had always loved helping Marcus out with his vineyard in Napa, but even so, she was surprised by how much she liked working on a farm, with the exception of cleaning bathrooms. She’d enjoyed using the riding lawnmower that morning, and had loved the thrill of having all that power between her legs. She also really liked having her hands in the rich soil as she weeded the garden, and the pigs and chickens had become like a second family to her by now.

She had just finished mucking out the mama pig’s stall and was giving her boots a gentle hose-down when Grayson suddenly walked out of the stables. “I just heard from the neighbor to the west of here that one of my fences is down and the cows are grazing on his land. We need to get over there immediately to fix it. I’ve saddled Rosie for you.”

Lori knew she could be stubborn and full of pride. Impulsive, too. But she wasn’t stupid. Which was why she had no problem at all admitting, “I don’t know how to ride a horse. Can’t we get out to the fence another way?”

“Not without the sound of the motor driving even more cows into the neighbor’s field.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, then, why don’t you give me a quick riding lesson?”

“We don’t have time for a lesson.”

He looked as frustrated as she felt. She knew they were nothing more than employer and farmhand, but oh, how she wished he’d talk to her, look at her, for some other reason than because of a fence or a dirty house that needed cleaning or because she’d just screwed something up.

She wished even more that she could just stop wishing, already.

Finally, he informed her, “You’re going to have to ride with me.” He looked none too happy about it.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, not happy about it either. Considering the way her body instantly heated up even from two dozen feet away, she knew that his avoiding her had been a good idea...and that riding on a horse together was an equally bad one.

She couldn’t get on a horse with Grayson, couldn’t be that close to all his marvelously big, hard muscles. Especially when he was looking even more brooding, mysterious, and super-crazy-sexy today in his jeans and work shirt and cowboy hat and boots.