“Just an old farm.” He shrugged, jamming his hands into his pockets.
She shook her head and looked at him with unabashed curiosity as she took her backpack off. He downplayed everything of significance: his kids, his property, his need for medical attention. He didn’t like being the center of attention. Quiet eyes. But assessing eyes, too.
“If it’s nothing more than just some old farm, then why are you fighting so hard against Fossyl?” she challenged, quirking her brow at him and pinning him with a look.
His eyes ignited like shimmery obsidian flames. Good. At least something got a rise out of him besides her body.
“Because it’s mine to protect. Because it’s been in the family for 140 years. Because it’s my boys’ legacy and the only one they’re ever gonna get since I fucked up my own so long ago. And because Fossyl took advantage of my grams and granddad, when they put those death traps out in the back ninety, and I want them gone. So even if this was one giant cesspit, I’d fight Fossyl just as hard. And I’m a farmer and they’re a corporation, so I’ll probably lose, and ain’t that some shit.” He nearly spat the word.
He was much more than a farmer. She opened her mouth to reply.
“Shoes in the bin,” he added, cutting her off. “First-aid kit’s this way. C’mon. I’ll clean up your leg.”
He strode down the hallway toward the open entry to the kitchen. She dragged loose her strings wrapping around her ankles, bent over so that her skirt rode up her thighs, noticed him in her periphery glance over his shoulder and slow to a pause, felt his gaze rove up her legs to where her skirt fluttered against her ass as if he didn’t think she could see him.
She grinned. Venom about her question or not, she was under his skin, and she shimmied the leather straps carelessly off her toes into the tray, letting them land haphazardly upon each other next to his nice, neat boots.
His eyes darted from her to her sandals. He glared at them. Like they were offensive athletic socks. She flashed a syrupy smile at him and he ducked out of sight. Ten bucks said he wouldn’t be able to help himself straightening them at the first possible chance.
She followed him as his abandoned cell phone lit up with more texts. The ticking of a grandfather clock was a steady metronome. A 3/4 time signature played out in her mind to the cadence like “Minuet in G,” and as she passed the formal living room, she spied a pocket door opposite her, open, and she spotted a…piano? She looked away.
In they walked to a massive kitchen. He slipped inside a pantry where he rummaged around. Jeezus. Granite counters, restored floor planks, farmhouse cabinets that reached up to the ten-foot ceiling. The Carvalho family’s housekeeper would have killed for all the storage space. Before the accident. Before Ridgeport Prep Boarding School. When Heart had still been home to spend countless hours slouching on the kitchen counter doing homework while Monarch braided her hair.
Dishes sat stacked in perfect rows on open shelving. A six-burner range and a pot-filler faucet were tucked into a brick arch, a spice rack to placate the most adventurous tastebuds sat beside it. Stainless-steel double ovens. There was even a wood-burning stove attached to the wall through a chimney pipe, perhaps original to the house. His island was surrounded by barstools of roughly hewn wood. A rustic picnic table sat to the side, with tin lanterns hanging over it from the ceiling, upon which sat the only mess she’d seen so far, if one could call it a mess: a neat legal pad, pen, and stack of papers that from this distance, looked like bank statements, next to a cup of what must have been morning coffee.
“Are you a five-star chef? Posh taste, Ty.” She fingered a row of herbs drying in the window overlooking an expanse of green, where a soccer net sat with another ball forgotten in the grass. “You’ve got some serious basil and parsley here, and I think you need a housekeeper because this place is such a dump.”
She heard him huff a laugh at her backhanded compliment.
“You’d hate me,” she continued. “I’m lucky if my socks get matched coming out of the dryer. My mom was always saying I should be more like—”
She flipped on the lights over what must be the original farmhouse sink. Beside it sat a misshapen clay art project, probably made by one of his kids, in which sat his sponge. Her mom used to do the same thing. Used every clay project she and Monarch made at school in every possible way. A smile she hadn’t realized was on her face fell.
“Garden out back. My boys and I grow herbs and vegetables. Most of the food here is homegrown. This place needed a lot of repairs after my grandparents died,” he said from within the pantry. “Granddad’s health failed him and he let a lot of things go. Since I had to play mom and dad to my boys, I needed something better than my gran’s old kitchen. So I renovated it.”
“Like, hired out the job, right?”
He shrugged. No, he’d done all the renovation?
So he was a single dad? “Where’s their mom? If you don’t mind my asking?”
Had she died? Had they divorced? Did they do a joint custody split? Come to think of it, none of those photos in the foyer had been of his children. None of it was her business, but that remark about being the family fixer suddenly bore new context that made her mind leap to conclusions.
He didn’t answer. Had he not heard her? Bullshit.
Switching off the light, he toed closed the pantry, a metal, tension-clasped first aid box in hand. Heart dropped her backpack and ran the water in the sink, rummaging through his cupboards to find the dish soap and scrubbing her hands. She toweled off, noticing him eyeing her.
“Make yourself at home,” he quipped.
“Don’t mind if I do. All right, front and center, Hercules. I do believe your surgeon du jour is barefoot in a kitchen, and by the way, she’s never been caught dead like this before,” she said, her mouth twisting sideways, knowing she was popping that little divot by the corner of her mouth. She drummed her fingertips together like a mad scientist, quirking her brow, and held her hand out like a surgeon. “Scalpel.”
He harrumphed, but came to her, sauntering, his long legs lumbering, feet in nothing but socks. Intimate.
“So is being barefoot in a kitchen a first for you?” he drawled.
“It is. As was kissing a man during a tornado, so we have two firsts together already.”
His crease popped with an easy smile. Unlike the others, he didn’t seem as if he’d had to think about it. Tension pulled tight, like a winch drawing him closer as she leaned her rear against the island and watched his approach. He handed her the first aid kit. She set it down. One look at the heat brewing in his eyes and it was clear he was no saint.