Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  “Turd in the punchbowl!” Stetson howled, clutching at his chest in pain. “I’m sure he’s nothing like that!”

  “Hey, I was just agreeing with you.” She shot him a triumphant grin. “Are you trying to say that your summation of his character wasn’t accurate?”

  He paused, his beer bottle halfway up to his mouth. “I’m not quite sure how I got myself into this,” he grumbled as he took another long swig.

  “I couldn’t begin to guess!” she informed him cheerily, holding her glass up to toast him. “I was just being a well-behaved guest, agreeing with my host.” She batted her eyelashes innocently as she took another sip of her own drink.

  It was heady and strong and she felt another flush of heat wash over her body. She wondered for a moment if she should stop and go to bed and hide from this man who set her on fire with just a look, but he was taking her glass out of her hand instead, and she just watched it go, a little off-balance from the missing weight of the goblet.

  And then he was kissing her.

  Finally kissing her.

  It felt like years that she’d been waiting for this moment – decades, maybe – the electricity crackling between them like lightning strikes on a beach. It was hot and painful and amazing and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever breathe right again. His mouth moved over hers, his tongue probing the seam of her lips, and then she was opening her mouth with a groan that mingled with his, as his tongue swept inside, wild and passionate. Her hands clutched at his shirt, trying and failing to hold onto something that would stabilize her. Ground her.

  He was hovering over her and she realized that at some point, he’d laid her back on the couch and she hadn’t even realized it had happened but instead of pushing him away as she should, instead of slapping him or kneeing him in the balls or something, she pulled harder on his shirt, tugging him towards her, wanting his weight on her, pressing her down, telling her that he wanted her too.

  There was something that she should be worried about; some reason why having him take off her shirt wasn’t a good idea, but it was fuzzy and out of reach and so Jennifer ignored it. She only wanted to focus on this man and this moment. Nothing else mattered.

  For one glorious heartbeat, his hard body was pressed along the length of hers and he was working the buttons of her shirt, trying to open it up to his mouth and hands and gaze, and then he was gone.

  Gone.

  Where had he gone?

  Jenn’s eyes shot open – she hadn’t even realized she’d closed them – and she sat up, chest heaving, collapsing against the back of the couch as Stetson stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “I shouldn’t have…I have to…goodnight.”

  He scrambled off the couch like his ass was on fire, and had made it to the doorway of the living room before turning back to say, “Up the stairs. First door on the left. That’s your room.”

  And then he was gone and she was left alone, just her and the flickering candles in the hearth and a mostly empty glass of wine.

  Chapter 27

  Stetson

  He heard her stirring around long before she came down the stairs. He was sitting at the kitchen table, breakfast finished, doing his best to pretend as if everything was fine and normal, while Carmelita puttered around, humming happily to herself. Never one to miss a thing, she’d asked if he wanted fresh candles placed in the hearth for tonight, and he’d told her thank you, but no. She’d looked at him for a long moment, probably trying to decide how far she could press the questioning, but finally left it alone, going back to making breakfast for her and Jennifer.

  Stetson could only hope that Jennifer liked to eat first thing in the morning, because Carma was cooking even more than normal, and that was truly saying something.

  Finally, Jennifer stumbled down the stairs in a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt, both relics leftover from Stetson’s junior high years, and instantly, Stetson found that he had two competing thoughts in his head:

  1) Why had Carmelita kept that clothing all this time? She surely didn’t expect to need to clothe an accountant years down the road who didn’t have the good grace to grow to a normal adult-sized height, and Stetson was surely never going to fit into those clothes again; and

  2) Jennifer made basketball shorts and beat-up t-shirts look good. Damn good. Way too damn good.

  He took a long sip of his coffee as he shifted in his chair, trying to hide his sudden arousal.

  Yeah right. Who was he kidding? His arousal had never really left. After he’d run up the stairs last night and away from the temptation that was Jennifer the Accountant, he’d tried to take care of business the same way he always did, but the spark was missing after all these years, and the palm of his hand just wasn’t the date it used to be, dammit, especially all wrapped up in the ace bandage Carmelita was faithfully replacing every morning.

  The cuts were clean and infection-free, sure, but the bandage did tend to put a damper on…certain activities.

  “Good morning,” Jennifer said in a gravelly voice, jerking Stetson back to the present. She cleared her throat as she shoved her hair out of her face. “How are you guys this morning?” She had this crease across her face where her pillow must’ve been pressing into her cheek, and her hair was definitely on the mussed side.

  Stetson shifted again. He wanted to be the cause of her looking like that. He wanted to see her with her lips wrapped around—

  “Good, good,” Carmelita said, breaking into Stetson’s increasingly naughty thoughts. “Here, have some coffee, and I have an omelet almost done.”

  Jennifer slid into the other chair at the worn kitchen table, the one where Carmelita always sat, and the sight made Stetson feel distinctly…something. Uncomfortable? Happy? At peace? Disturbed? Horny?

  Definitely something.

  The accountant should not be sitting in Carmelita’s chair in his old athletic clothes – without a bra, he was pretty sure – with mussed hair and a sleep line criss-crossing her face.

  Absolutely, positively should not be happening.

  Which was probably why he was having a hard time breathing. That had to be it.

  “So what are you going to do today?” she asked him, clearly fishing around for a safe topic. “Has it stopped raining yet?” She craned her neck to look out the window over the kitchen sink, but he doubted that she could see much from her viewpoint.

  “Cleared out a couple of hours ago,” he answered, glad to have a non-bra-and-mussed-hair topic to concentrate on. “Hopefully no more rain this summer, especially not like that.”

  Carmelita slid a plate overflowing with food in front of Jennifer, whose eyes were the size of saucers at the sheer amount of food in front of her. Stetson bit back a grin. Apparently, Jennifer didn’t eat enough food for three grown men every morning. Considering how tiny she was, he couldn’t say that he was overly surprised by that. Carma probably thought she needed to be fattened up. She was just perfect, by way of Stetson’s thinking. He could pick her up and slide her down—

  “I thought farmers liked rain,” Jennifer said, confusion wrinkling her brow.

  Stetson blinked for a moment, trying to remember what they were talking about.

  “Right. They do. But not that much, all at once. Rain should water your crops, not drown them.”

  “Fair enough,” Jennifer said, flashing a grin at him as she dug lustily into the plate in front of her. Carmelita clucked her approval as she watched Jenn go to town on her breakfast.

  “Wyatt and Declan are coming over this afternoon to talk about harvest,” Stetson continued. “Wyatt was supposed to be harvesting right away because of the drought we were in – his dryland wheat was ripening faster than normal because of that – but now…I don’t know how he’ll want to deal with it, now that his wheat is drenched. Dryland farming is a bitch sometimes.” He shrugged, just as Carmelita snapped him across the head with the kitchen towel. “Dryland farming is downright awful sometimes!” he amended quickly. Carma gave him a pleased
smile as Jennifer bit back a smile of her own.

  Women…some days…

  “Why does a drought cause wheat to ripen faster?” Jennifer asked, doggedly working her way through her plate of food. Stetson was quite impressed with her tenacity, actually.

  “Evolution,” Stetson said with a shrug and another sip of his coffee. He’d long ago finished his breakfast and should be getting work done, but chatting with Jenn was more fun.

  Probably too much fun, but he was going to ignore that fact for the moment.

  “If wheat isn’t getting enough water,” he continued, “it will put all of its energy towards producing the kernels, because that’s its seed. Genetically, it wants to produce as much seed as possible before it dies, so a plant going through a drought will almost always stop any unnecessary growth, like leaves or roots, and focus only on developing their seeds as much as possible. How is it that you know so much about how much beef should cost, but not about how drought affects plants?”

  She stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth, surprised by his brisk change in topic. “Oh. Well, because of my job. I go to farms and ranches and audit their books, to see if I can find anything of value to sell. I also make sure that all past deals are legit. Sometimes, people like to cook the books by over- or under-representing a sale, to either make themselves look more or less attractive to a bank, depending on their end goal.”

  Stetson cocked an eyebrow at her, confused. She sighed.

  “So, let’s say a rancher says that they’re selling beef on the hoof for two dollars less than the going rate. Either he’s a really bad businessman – which is possible – or he’s lying and trying to hide income from the bank. If I don’t know the going rate for beef on the hoof, then I’d look at that figure and not realize that it was potentially a lie. So when I got hired at Intermountain, I quickly started paying attention to the markets. But the amount of water on crops affecting when it needs to be harvested doesn’t really enter the equation, so I haven’t had to learn about it.” She shrugged.

  “Huh. Makes sense.” He scratched at his stubble-covered jaw. It was such a different way of looking at things, and yet it made perfect sense how she could be totally ignorant and totally intelligent about the same topic at the same time. It hurt his head a little, truthfully. “You wanna see a cattle operation in action?”

  He had no idea where that question came from. Certainly not from him. It was his voice, and it was his mouth moving, sure. But he wouldn’t make that offer to Jennifer. Despite the fact that he trusted that she wanted to help him save his farm, that didn’t mean that she would actually be able to. There was no guarantee. So dating someone in that position – who held that kind of power over him – was an insanely bad idea.

  Which was why he’d run last night. A small part of his brain still seemed to be keeping up with reality, which was that Jennifer and Intermountain West Bank & Loan held his future in their hands, and they may just choose to squash him flat.

  Unfortunately, the part of his brain that was keeping up with that reality seemed to be growing smaller by the day.

  “Oh!” Jennifer stared at him over her coffee cup. Carmelita had disappeared somewhere, leaving just the two of them in the kitchen, and as the electricity crackled between them, the fact that they were alone seemed to be all he could think about.

  Well, that and some other things, of course.

  Jennifer swallowed hard, licking her lips. Stetson held his breath. The clock ticked on the wall.

  “Yeah! I mean, sure. Yes. That’d be good.” She took another sip of her coffee.

  “Great!” he said, a little too cheerfully. He groaned inwardly. He sounded like a randy teenage boy who’d just convinced a girl to go on a date with him.

  Which was probably a little closer to the truth than his pride wanted to admit, although he wasn’t sure how much of a date a city girl would consider the tour of a working farm to be.

  “Let me go get your car out of the ditch first,” he said quickly, trying to cover his nerves, “and then I can take you on a tour of the farm. Hold on – did you bring any clothes with you that aren’t skirts or pantyhose or something?”

  “I didn’t bring any clothes with me at all. That’s why I’m wearing your basket—”

  “Not to the farm, here to Sawyer,” he clarified. “Did you just bring auditing clothes to Sawyer?”

  “Oh. Right. Ummm…yes. I don’t normally pack any play clothes while I’m on an audit.”

  He had to work hard to keep from rolling his eyes. Jeans and boots were not play clothes. They were work clothes. The skirts and high heels – now those were the impractical ones. Although he would admit that it seemed like a stretch to call them play clothes, either. They were good for looks only, by his estimation.

  She did look good in them, but that was besides the point.

  “Hold on – how much longer are you going to be here?” he asked bluntly. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to ask that question before. When she’d first arrived, he’d been blindly hoping she’d be gone by the end of the day, but it was Friday now, and she was still here. Didn’t she need to go back to Boise at some point?

  “An audit can last anywhere from one to two weeks, depending on what I find,” she said, shrugging. Stetson gulped. He was glad she hadn’t informed him of that fact when she’d first arrived. He really would’ve blown a gasket.

  Now, the idea of her sticking around for another week was terrifyingly thrilling, like being poised at the top of a steep drop on a rollercoaster ride at Six Flags.

  Or what he assumed a rollercoaster ride would feel like. His parents hadn’t exactly taken him to amusement parks every weekend growing up.

  “The more complicated the business, the longer it takes. Or the messier an office, the longer it takes.” She sent him a teasing grin. He grimaced in return.

  “My filing skills aren’t…exactly top notch.” Which was his way of acknowledging that they plain didn’t exist, and apologizing for that fact, guy style.

  She shrugged. “Most farmers aren’t. I would’ve been surprised if your office had been spick and span.”

  My office. That seemed so weird to hear. It was his office, even if it still didn’t feel like it.

  Would never feel like it.

  “Well, I’ll get to work on your car, if you want to get to work on the audit. I’ll come get you when the Honda is out of the ditch.”

  Her eyebrows creased with concern. “Are you sure? You don’t need me to drive it or something? I hate to have caused you a mess that you have to clean up.”

  “Nah, it’s all good. I’ll have Christian help me. He was already done for the day when you showed up on the front porch last night, or I would’ve had him help me then. I try not to call him out after-hours.”

  “Who’s Christian?” she asked, confused.

  “My foreman. Him and a couple of other guys live full-time here on the farm; my other employees are seasonal. Christian’s father, Jorge, is my brother’s foreman, but I stole Christian away a long time ago with the siren call of handmade tamales.” He’d seen Carmelita coming in through the doorway behind Jennifer, and had known that she’d love the compliment.

  He was right. Of course.

  “Christian is a good boy. He knows good food when he tastes it,” Carmelita said with a wink, swooping in to grab their dishes and begin cleaning up. “Wyatt does not have a housekeeper, so he cannot bribe people to work for him with tasty food.”

  “He sure ain’t gonna cook it himself,” Stetson mumbled. The idea of his brother putting on an apron and cooking a meal was ridiculous. Wyatt was more likely to actually smile than he was to put on a frilly apron.

  And God knows, Wyatt wasn’t real likely to actually smile.

  “Well, I better get to it,” Jennifer said. “If I’m going to tour the farm, I should get more paperwork sorted before then. And hey, maybe with a tour of the farm, I might be able to spot something that could help with the bank loan.”
/>
  As she headed upstairs to the guest room to get ready for the day, all Stetson could think was that if she told him to sell his truck, all bets were off. He was willing to do a lot of things for his farm, but that wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 28

  Jennifer

  Jennifer stared down at the pile of clothes on the edge of the bed – they were her clothes from yesterday, clean and dry and pressed, courtesy of Carmelita. She’d never had a live-in housekeeper before, or even a maid who came and cleaned once a week, but Jenn was quickly starting to realize the benefits of such an arrangement.

  Of course, if she continued to eat omelets and bacon strips and English muffins and diced fruit and handmade jelly every morning, she was going to need help walking pretty soon. Maybe they could just roll her from place to place. It would totally be worth it.

  She pulled her skirt and white button-up shirt back on, and looked down with a sigh. It was true that this had to be the least practical outfit possible to tour a farm in. It may be clean right now, but she was pretty sure that thirty minutes in, it will have lost that crisp, clean look. Not to mention tramping through the mud in her high heels.

  Farm tours were not normally part and parcel of an audit, but then again, neither was drinking wine or staying at a client’s house or making out with said client on the couch or…

  She forced those thoughts away. It’d been hard enough to fall asleep last night. Reliving those glorious moments on the couch was not going to help her concentrate on her job.

  She looked around the beautiful guest room with a happy sigh. The roses on the wall, the fireplace, the hardwood floors – it was like a decorator’s idea of what an old-fashioned farmhouse should look like, but with the patina of age and use that no decorator could ever fully imitate.

  She had just stepped into the guest bathroom when she noticed that Carmelita had put a fresh toothbrush and toothpaste in there for her, for which Jennifer was wildly grateful. She could live through a lot of things, but unbrushed teeth was not one of them.