Luke holds open the door for me. "Has anyone ever told you that you need a lesson in accepting help?"
I bristle at his words. "I don't need help, Luke Saint." I follow him into the kitchen. Olivia walks with me, babbling happily: "Saint, Saint."
"Hah, she's like a little parrot." Luke sets a bag on the kitchen counter and starts removing food items one by one.
"Which is why you should watch your mouth," I warn him.
"Me?" He turns around and takes the bag out of my hands. "I think you're just as foulmouthed as I am, and that kid of yours is going to wind up talking filthier than a sailor because of it."
"I am not!"
He raises his eyebrows. "If you say so, Red. You've got a naughty side."
"Wait, is that what all of this is?" I ask, gesturing at the bags on the counter. "This ‘accepting help’ nonsense? Is this your attempt to flirt with me?"
The corner of his mouth pulls up, and he looks at me with a crooked smile that somehow makes him look more arrogant than before. When he leans in close to me, he speaks low and graveled, and his voice sends a shiver of arousal ricocheting through my body. "Trust me, Red," he says. "When I try to flirt with you, you'll know it."
I swear that everything that comes out of this man's mouth sounds like it's dripping with sex. I remind myself that this kind of guy is exactly the opposite of what I should be looking for in a man. I should be looking for stable, not oozing-sex-from-every-pore-of-his-body.
Clearing my throat, I pause before I speak, trying to shake off the lust that I fear will cloud my voice. "Good," I say. "Because if you were flirting, I'd remind you that I'm practically old enough to be your mother."
Luke chortles, and when Olivia hears him laugh, she claps loudly. "Saint! Saint!" she yells before darting across the tile floor to the other side of the kitchen where she parks herself at the refrigerator, rearranging letter-shaped magnets.
"See? She thinks that's just as ridiculous as I do," he says. "My mother. You're not that much older than me."
"Well, I'm too old to have some jock barging into my kitchen and telling me I don't know how to cook or run my orchard."
Luke looks down at me, his blue eyes flashing. "You're damn uppity for someone who needs something from me."
Someone who needs something from me. My mind goes immediately to sex and I hate myself for it. "Uppity? I didn't ask you to come in here and cook. Or poke around my orchard."
He leans in close to me. Too close. I can smell him, soap and aftershave, clean and masculine. "I wasn't poking around," he murmurs, his voice low. "And if I did, you wouldn't be complaining."
Warmth rushes through me at the thought of Luke poking around anywhere, and I force the thought out of my head. "I don't need you, for the record."
The way he looks at me makes me blush even harder. "We both know that's not true, Red."
"I don't," I insist, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. "And this charming little flirting act of yours might work on girls your own age, but it doesn’t work on me."
Luke grins. "So you admit it's charming, then?"
"I said it was an act."
"You said charming." He pulls coffee from his bag. "Now, can you make coffee, or is your coffee just as crap as your food?"
I take the bag of coffee from his hand, groaning in frustration. "You don't have many friends, do you?"
"I could ask the same thing of you, sweetheart. So why don't you just make the coffee and get out of my kitchen?"
"It's my kitchen," I insist as I fill the pot with water at the kitchen sink. I glance over my shoulder at Olivia, who's happily pulled off all the magnets from the refrigerator and surrounded herself with them on the floor. "And you're working for me. Apparently. Which we haven't even discussed. Aren't you concerned it's slightly inappropriate, cooking your employer breakfast?"
Luke walks up behind me, his hand on the side of the sink. His breath is warm on the back of my neck, and I swear that as soon as it hits my skin, I stop breathing. My heart thumps loudly in my chest, and the water overflows from the coffee pot, running down the sides and over my hands, but I don't move. It's like I'm completely paralyzed.
Luke reaches around me with his other hand, shutting off the water. His arm grazes my shoulder and sends a jolt of electricity runs through my body. "This is nowhere near inappropriate, Red," he whispers, his voice quiet, his words barely even audible with his lips pressed against my ear. "Inappropriate would be if I cooked you breakfast in the morning, after you came on my tongue the night before."
I swallow hard, my heart beating so fast I swear it's going to beat right out of my chest. Then he walks back to the counter nonchalantly, like he didn't just talk about me coming on his tongue, and busies himself with preparing breakfast. I stand at the sink for a moment, my hand gripping the edge tightly, and when I glance over at him, he looks at me and winks.
Damn it, I think. Hiring him is a very bad idea.
7
Luke
"Good morning, Autumn!" Greta calls. The front door slams and Olivia squeals, tottering headlong down the hallway. "Hey Liv-Livs!"
"In here," Autumn calls.
The girl arrives in the kitchen with Olivia perched on her hip and stops short when she looks at me, not even bothering to hide her raised eyebrows. "Oh," she says, smiling. "I didn't know you had company."
"He's not company," Autumn says, shaking her head. Autumn's face flushes nearly as red as her hair, and she looks guilty as sin, like we were caught with our pants down around our ankles or something.
Not that I haven't been thinking about what that would be like with this woman.
There's just something about that uptight, haughty attitude that makes me want to get her to let loose. She's not even my type – too straight-laced for my taste – yet all I could think about after I left her place last night was running my hands down her sweet curves and covering my mouth with hers.
"Greta Hayward, meet Luke Saint," Autumn is saying, her voice interrupting my thoughts. "He's the new foreman," Autumn explains. "I think. He helped with the fire."
"I'm a smoke jumper."
Autumn turns toward me. "You are?"
Greta clears her throat. "It looks like you have some business to take care of." Before she walks out of the room with Olivia, she gives Autumn a wide-eyed look that I definitely don't mistake. She's giving us space because she thinks there's something going on between us.
Autumn apparently doesn't notice that look. "You're a smoke jumper?"
"Yup."
"So, you already have a job," she says. "You don't need this one."
I shrug. "I do and I don't."
"What's that supposed to mean? God, you're infuriating."
"I'm infuriating because I have a job?"
"No, you're infuriating because you don't give a straight answer to any question."
"Maybe you should stop being nosy and I'll stop being evasive."
Autumn exhales heavily and gives me a look out of the corner of her eye – pure irritation –that just makes me laugh. "You're already the worst employee ever."
"I can be a better one," I assure her softly, not bothering to disguise the innuendo evident in my tone.
What the hell is wrong with me? She's older, has a kid, and is completely not the kind of woman I need to be fucking around with.
Autumn's eyes widen, and when she stands up, I do something stupid. Reckless. I reach out and take hold of her wrist to stop her.
"What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me. I'd think she’s pissed, except the way she looks at me with those big eyes and the sharp inhale of breath makes me absolutely sure she's not angry at all.
I turn her hand over, slowly tracing the inside of her wrist with my finger and running it across her palm. By the time I reach the middle of her hand, her eyes close softly for a second like she's blinking, except it's just a moment too long to be just a blink. She's enjoying my touch. Savoring it.
Her lips part
slightly, and I think I hear her moan. The fact that she's so turned-on by my touching her hand makes me want to fucking explode, my cock rigid against the zipper of my jeans.
It's been a long time since she's been touched by anyone, I can tell that immediately. That fact makes her vulnerable. She's been burned.
That fact makes her the kind of girl I shouldn't be putting my hands on, not at all. That fact makes her the kind of girl I shouldn't be thinking about the way I'm thinking right now.
I'm not the kind of guy a girl like her needs.
I pull my hands away from hers and clear my throat. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"Are you sure you want this job?" Autumn walks ahead of me through the orchard between the rows of apple trees.
"Temporarily," I note. "Until you find someone more permanent."
"Why?" She pauses to look at me, shielding her eyes from the sun.
"Because there's no sense in you winding up burning down this damn property on account of a no-good foreman."
"You sure you've got nowhere else to be?" she asks.
She asks like she's interested, like she wants to know the answer to why I'm hanging around West Bend. She has no idea what a complicated fucking answer that is. Shit, it's more than complicated. It's just plain ol' fucked up.
My abusive asshole father was the reason I got the hell out of West Bend as soon as I turned eighteen. He died a few months ago, and the world is a better place for it. I don't give a shit that he's dead, except that my mother supposedly committed suicide after that.
My father's death makes sense to me. The medical examiner ruled it accidental, a contusion to the back of the head. Shit, there was nothing unusual about that. The man was a drunk – a mean one – and stumbling around and falling into things was par for the course for him.
But my mother killing herself? After the man who made her life – and ours – a living hell was finally dead? Shit, that just hasn't sat well with me. After all that time she stayed with him, why would she kill herself when he finally died?
I should be long gone from West Bend. Instead, I'm here for now, for reasons I can't explain to this girl, Autumn Mayburn, who comes from old money. Bourbon money. Yeah, I went home and looked her up on the internet last night. Even if I didn't read what I read about her family's bourbon company, I'd be able to tell by the way she carries herself: sure and certain of every step she takes. She's classy.
And I'm as far away from class as you can get.
"Luke?"
Autumn’s voice jolts me out of my thoughts. "Yep?"
"You don't have someplace else to be?"
"Nah. I'm here in West Bend for a little while," I say. "Taking some time off."
Autumn looks at me for a long moment, and I think she sees right through my flimsy statement, but she doesn't probe any further. She just nods. "Okay. My gain, then." She pauses. "I think."
I clear my throat. "What are you doing with this place, anyway?"
Autumn laughs. "You mean how did I wind up running an orchard? That's kind of personal, don't you think?"
"No. I meant, what are you doing with this place, as in what are your goals?"
I walk beside her. She doesn't laugh this time, instead looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "Why are you asking?"
"I noticed some things, walking around here, things you could be doing different with the orchard, planting more efficiently."
"You know about orchards?"
"I know trees," I say. "I worked for the forest service right out of college. You should hire a foreman who knows trees, you know. This being an orchard and all."
Autumn sighs. "Yes, I realize. I was in a pinch, hiring the last one. I just needed someone to manage the employees out here."
"Anyway, it matters if you're thinking bigger harvest, more production, that kind of thing. Spacing trees and things like that."
Autumn nods. "Okay. Show me."
We spend the rest of the morning walking down rows of trees, going out to the edges of the orchard, and I give her my take on things, point out changes I think might increase production when she's planning her planting again. The fire didn't damage much, hitting some of the trees that had already been harvested, and I tell her how she should replant the burnt areas more efficiently.
She tells me about her plans for the cidery, how she's in local restaurants and shops, but planning to expand in the next year, looking for placement in larger restaurants and craft brew stores outside of West Bend.
We walk and talk, and I find myself surprised by her knowledge of the orchard and her obvious love for it. When she shows me the cidery, she lights up as she talks about the brewing process and the different variations she's trying.
As she talks, I can't hear the words coming out of her mouth anymore because I'm too busy watching her lips open and close. Those soft, lush lips. When she gestures toward something, half-facing me, it's all I can do not to grab her and push her up against the wall.
"Luke?" she asks softly.
"Autumn," I say, her name rolling off my tongue. Autumn. I think about how her name would sound coming out of my mouth when I'm fucking her, and I immediately regret it, because my cock goes rock hard and if she looks down, that's what she's going to see.
"Stop looking at my tits," she says. But she doesn't sound annoyed. In fact, her voice is breathy. It sounds more like an invitation to look at her tits.
"I'm not looking at your tits." Now I'm lying, because I'm obviously looking at them now that she said something. They're pretty fucking amazing tits, actually, her cleavage visible at the top of the V-cut of her t-shirt. When she inhales sharply, her chest rises, and my cock throbs at the sight.
"Liar," she says softly.
But when I step closer to her, she doesn't move away. "I think you want me to look at your tits."
The corners of her mouth turn up, just slightly. "Of course you think that."
I don't know what it is about this woman. I've known her all of two days, and she just seems to have a way of getting under my skin. "I think that, because it's a fact."
"You think that because you're the kind of guy who thinks every woman in the world wants you."
I'm so close to her I can smell her, the light scent of her perfume lingering in the air between us. Her lips are slightly parted as she looks up at me, and all I can think about is how much I want to bite that lower lip of hers. "Well, that's pretty much a fact, too."
"You're an arrogant shit," she says, but she's smiling.
"Not arrogant. Accurate." I trail my finger underneath her jaw, tilting her head up toward me, and she doesn't pull away. Her eyelids close lightly, and she practically melts against me, she wants it so bad. Fuck, she's not the only one who wants it.
I tell myself that I should just turn away, tell myself that I shouldn't touch her. Except I'm drawn to her, and there's no way I can turn away.
I touch my lips lightly to hers, just grazing them and – an overhead light flicks on in the cidery.
Autumn jumps back away from me, like she's just been electrocuted.
"Autumn!" a woman calls, bustling into the room wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, her hair pushed up under a hair net. "Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were giving someone a tour."
Autumn clears her throat, and she's suddenly businesslike, her voice crisp. "Mary, this is Luke. He's going to be the new foreman."