I was slipping on a pair of knickers under my skirt just as my bare-chested hero came bounding back into the kitchen with a large, lidded pot and a spoon.
“Are you going to cook it?” I gasped, ignoring the bald-faced grin he gave my lower quadrants as my floaty blue skirt fell back into place.
“Well, my uncle Ray favors a good roast possum. He says it tastes like chicken,” he drawled, holding the lid over his thick forearm like a shield as he tapped the spatula out of place. “Personally, I have to wonder if he’s been eating chicken that tastes like ass, but that’s neither here nor there.”
I darted away as he opened the cupboard door. A feral growl echoed through the empty house as he maneuvered the lid down and the pot over the front of the cupboard. He used the wooden spoon to reach over the grumpy animal and nudge the possum into the pot. He slapped the lid over it, turning and giving me a proud grin.
“Thank you.” I sighed. “Really, I don’t know what I would have done—”
The giant rat began thrashing around inside the pot and making the lid dance.
“I want that thing tested for steroids!” I yelped.
“It’s just a baby,” he said, placing one of his ham-sized hands on the lid. “These things burrow in pretty much wherever they want to, doors and walls be damned. A cousin of mine went to tuck his daughter in one night and found one cuddled with her stuffed animals.”
“This is a baby?” I peered down at the dancing pot. “How big do the mothers get?”
He shrugged. “Better question: where is his mama?”
“Oh,” I groaned as he opened the back door, crossed the yard, and gently shook the possum out of the pot and into the tall grass near the trees. I called after him, “Why did you have to say that? I have to sleep here!”
Climbing my back steps, he looked far more relaxed than he should have been after evicting a vicious furred fiend from my kitchen. Shirtless. “I have to sleep here, too. And if it makes you feel better, there’s a good chance that the mama could be sleepin’ under my side of the house,” he told me. “I’m Jed, by the way.”
I giggled, a hysterical edge glinting under the laughter, as he extended his hand toward me. “You’re kidding.”
He arched a sleek sandy eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”
I cleared my throat, barely concealing a giggle. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve never met a Jed before.”
He chuckled. “I’d imagine not, with that accent and all.”
Now it was my turn to raise the bitch-brow. He of the sultry backwoods drawl was mocking my accent? That was disappointing. Since landing in New York, I’d worked hard to control whatever lilt I’d picked up since moving in with Nana Fee. It wouldn’t do for the locals to know where I was from.
“Your accent,” he said, his forehead creasing. “Boston, right? ‘Pahk the cah in the yahd’? ”
I blushed a little and regretted the bitch-brow. I’d forgotten how muddled my manner of speaking was compared to my new neighbors’ Southern twang. My accent was vaguely Boston, vaguely Irish. Nana Fee had tried to correct my lack of R’s in general and attempted to teach me Gaelic, but the most I picked up were some of the more interesting expressions my aunts and uncles used. Mostly the dirty ones. So I spoke in a bizarre mishmash of dialects and colloquialisms, which led to awkward conversations over what to call chips, elevators, and bathrooms.
“Oh, right,” I said, laughing lightly. “Boston-born and raised.”
Technically, it wasn’t a lie.
Jed looked at me expectantly. I looked down to make sure I hadn’t forgotten some important article of clothing. “If you don’t give me your name, I’m just going to make one up,” he said, leaning against the counter. “And fair warning, you look like a Judith.”
“I do not!” I exclaimed.
“Half-dressed girls who climb me like a tree are usually named Judith,” he told me solemnly.
“This happens to you often?” I deadpanned.
He shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”
“It’s Nola,” I told him. “Nola Leary.”
“Jed Trudeau,” he said, shaking my outstretched hand. “If you don’t mind me sayin’, you look beat. Must’ve been a long flight.”
“It was,” I said, nodding. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go back to bed.”
There was a spark of mischief in his eyes, but I think he picked up on the fact that I was in no mood for saucy talk. His full lips twitched, but he clamped them together. He held up one large, work-roughened hand. “Hold on.”
He disappeared out the back door and I could hear his boot steps on the other side of my kitchen wall. He returned a few moments later, having donned a light cotton work shirt, still unbuttoned. He placed a large, cold, foil-wrapped package in my hands. “Chicken-and-rice casserole. One of the ladies down at the Baptist church made it for me. Well, several of the church ladies made casseroles for me, so I have more than I can eat. Just pop a plateful in the microwave for three minutes.”
I stared at the dish for a long while before he took it out of my hands and placed it in my icebox. “Do local church ladies often cater your meals?”
“I don’t go to Sunday services, so they’re very concerned about my soul. And I can’t cook to save my life. They’re afraid I’m just wasting away to nothing,” he said, shaking his head in shame, but there was that glint of trouble in his eyes again. He gave me a long, speculative look. “Well, I’ll let you get back to sleep. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks,” I said as he moved toward the door. I locked it behind him, turning and sagging against the dusty curtains covering the window in the door. “If there are any greater powers up there—stop laughing.”
I massaged my temples and set about making my tea. Jed seemed nice, if unfortunately named. And it was very kind of him to give a complete stranger a meal when he knew she had nothing but angry forest creatures in her cupboards. But I couldn’t afford this sort of distraction. I’d come to the Hollow for a purpose, not for friendships and flirtations with smoldering, half-dressed neighbors.
Just as I managed to locate a chipped mug in the spice drawer, a loud, angry screech sounded from somewhere left of my stove. I turned and fumbled with the locked kitchen door, yelling, “Jed!”
Enjoyed My Bluegrass Baby?
Look for the next delicious Bluegrass romance by Molly Harper
Available October 2013 from Pocket Star Books
ALSO BY MOLLY HARPER
The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
Driving Mr. Dead
Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs
Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men
Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever
Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors
How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
And One Last Thing . . .
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Molly Harper White
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ISBN 978-1-4767-0605-4
Molly Harper, My Bluegrass Baby
(Series: Bluegrass # 1)
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