Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  As her eyes traveled around the bathroom, she noticed a matching sliding door that she hadn’t seen last night, directly across from the door she’d just come through. Curious, she slid it open to find a much more masculine guest bedroom, ready and made up to be used at a moment’s notice. No painted roses this time, but rather, it was done up in dark blues accented with some lighter blues and cherry wood. It seemed to scream masculinity to Jennifer as she looked around. Was this Stetson’s room growing up?

  With a flush of embarrassment, she backed up into the bathroom, sliding the door shut again. She shouldn’t be poking around in a client’s home, no matter how much he had stopped feeling like a client, and had started feeling like a friend. Or more than a friend, actually.

  She walked over to the vanity and set about brushing her teeth and getting ready for the day. Now was not the time to have those thoughts. She had a farm to save, dammit.

  Chapter 29

  Stetson

  He approached the door to his dad’s office quietly, not wanting to disturb Jenn from her work, even though necessity dictated that he would; it didn’t mean he had to want to. She was not going to be happy when she heard his news.

  He peeked in to find her bent over the desk, her back to the door, mumbling as she ran the adding machine, the tape spitting out the top and curling every which way over the scarred desktop. The clanking noises from the calculator reminded him so much of his dad. He blinked, and there was his father, his reading glasses on the end of his nose, mumbling to himself as he fed numbers into the adding machine, his shoulders stooped with age and pain.

  A stab of heartache tore through Stetson and he gasped at the pain. He missed his father so damn much sometimes…

  The gasp must’ve been louder than he realized, because Jennifer jerked her head around and spotted him in the doorway. She managed to extricate herself from the Fainting Goat Chair without falling down on the floor, and sent him a big smile. “Did you get my car out?” she asked, leaning against the desk with a coffee mug in hand. He watched the way her skirt tightened against her thighs, and gulped.

  “Uhhhh…” he mumbled, tearing his eyes away from her thighs. Bad news. I have bad news to deliver. “So, I have bad news to deliver.” Way to ease into it, jackass. He sent her an overly bright smile. Her eyes were widening with panic, and he rushed on. “I broke your car!” he blurted out.

  Which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the easing into the topic that he could have done. She gasped and stared at him, thumping the coffee cup onto the desk next to her, brown liquid slopping out onto the desk. “You what?!” she practically hollered.

  He sent her a painful smile. “Yeah. Broken. Ummm…not all of the parts are still attached to your car.”

  “What parts are not still attached?!” Her voice broke, squeaking like a pre-teen boy at the end of that question. He winced.

  “Well, the mud had hardened once the rain stopped, and it turns out, the car was in there pretty deep. I was so close to getting it out, so I gave it one last yank, and…only the bumper came out.”

  “So my car is still in the ditch?” She was just staring at him like he’d killed her kitten. He gulped again.

  “No, no, the car is out. Christian got the backhoe and pushed on the backend while I tugged on the front end. He’s loading it up onto a flatbed right now – he’s going to drive it over to Mike’s place to be fixed.”

  “Hold on, who’s Mike?”

  “Oh. Right.” She doesn’t have every person in town memorized, jackass. Which made him a jackass for a second time in the same conversation. He was on a roll. “Mike the Mechanic,” he clarified. “He owns the best mechanic shop in town. His daughter does all of his paperwork for him. Good guy. His wife died years ago from cancer but he still owns the shop and is hard at work every day.”

  Annnnddddd…I’m going to shut up now. When even he could tell he was rambling, that wasn’t a good sign.

  “You broke my car,” Jennifer repeated in disbelief. “I can’t believe…” She broke out into laughter.

  Laughter. Why was she laughing? It was his turn to just stare at her.

  “This is a whole new level of insanity, you know that?” she got out. “I’ve never had a client break my car before. Just think – this audit is breaking all sorts of records. I’ve never spent the night at a client’s house, I’ve never kissed a client—” his ears went bright red, but she just kept going, ticking the items off on her fingers as she went, “—I’ve never gotten my car stuck in the ditch, and I’ve never had a client break my car. So! An audit for the record books.”

  She sent him a brilliant, laughing smile, and he finally groped his way to the realization that she wasn’t pissed. She wasn’t ready to punch him or call him a bastard or knee him in the nuts. She was…

  She was fine.

  “Aren’t you angry?” he burst out. He thought she’d made his head hurt before; that was nothing compared to what she was doing to it right now.

  “Well, I can’t say that it was the happiest, most awesome news I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, “but eh, it’s just a car. Mike the Mechanic – great name, by the way – will put it back together again. It’ll go down the road again. Life will go on. I mean, I like my Honda, but it’s just a thing – an item that can be replaced. You know?”

  “Right,” he mumbled, his head swimming from the effort of trying to understand that viewpoint on life. “Uhhhh…ready to go on that tour? My brothers will be here in a couple of hours, so we should probably get going.”

  As they walked towards the front door together, Stetson turned her words over and over in his mind. A car was just a thing that could be replaced. She was right. It just felt…weird.

  He’d been raised by a father who emphasized holding onto anything and everything, because as a farmer, he just might need it someday. Stetson liked to pretend that he hadn’t been raised to be a hoarder, but really, the only difference between him and a cat lady who owned 102 cats and had her living room stuffed to the ceiling with old newspapers was that his animals were cows instead of cats, and he stuffed his barn full of shit, not his living room.

  Ever since he was knee high to a grasshopper, he’d been taught that stuff was important. Stuff had value. If Stetson had broken a piece of farm equipment like he’d just torn off Jennifer’s bumper, his father would’ve been livid. Stetson would’ve gotten the whaling of his life, and wouldn’t have been able to walk for a week.

  As alien as Jennifer’s viewpoint on life was, Stetson couldn’t help thinking that it was more rational. Evenhanded. Focused on what truly mattered in life.

  Weird.

  Chapter 30

  Jennifer

  They stepped off the front porch and into the bright sunshine. She raised her hand up to shield her eyes. She’d been squirreled away in the office for so long, she’d rather forgotten what it was like to go outside into the sunshine and fresh air. It was still cool, the clouds busily scuttling away in the brilliant blue sky, but she knew by tomorrow, it would be hot again – typical summer temperatures. This reprieve from the heat wouldn’t last much longer.

  Stetson looked down at her skirt and then up at her. “I guess we’ll go in the truck. I’d been thinking the four-wheeler, but I don’t think you could straddle it in that outfit.”

  She looked down at the skirt with chagrin. “I wish I’d thought to pack pants,” she said, as he helped her swing up into the passenger seat of the truck. “Is there a place in town that sells jeans?”

  He closed the door and walked around to the other side, waiting until he opened the driver’s door to answer, “Frank’s does. Have you been there yet?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I met the tortaco already.”

  “The what?” He started the diesel engine and then turned in his seat to stare at her. “Two taco?”

  “No, tortaco. Let’s just say that you should thank God every day for Carmelita. Otherwise, you’d know ju
st what I’m talking about.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t let Carma hear you say that. She tells me that often enough.”

  “I’m sure she does.” Jennifer sent him a sassy grin. “Smart woman.”

  “She tells me that too,” he said dryly.

  Jennifer snorted with laughter, then turned serious. “What would you think about taking me to town, instead? If I bought jeans and boots and stuff, then tomorrow, you could take me on a proper tour of the farm.”

  She bit her lip as soon as she said it, her stomach flipping at her audacity. Why would he want to take her clothes shopping? He probably didn’t even want to take her on this tour of the farm. He’d probably just offered out of some weird sense of noblesse, like something that he should offer to every guest of the Miller Farm.

  “That’s a great idea!” he said, shooting her a wide grin. “I really think you’d get a better feel for the place if we could ride around in the four-wheeler anyway.”

  “Awesome,” she said, letting out the breath she’d been holding without realizing it. She opened the door back up again and slid out onto the ground, turning back and looking waaaayyyyy up at Stetson who was still behind the wheel of the truck. “Let me go get my purse. I hadn’t expected to need to buy anything on our tour. Be right back!” She shut the door and hurried back up the front steps and into the house. Heart thumping double time, she grabbed her stuff and ran as fast as her skirt and heels would let her back out to the waiting truck.

  Either she was sadly out of shape, or just the thought of spending time with Stetson was making her heart go triple time.

  Maybe it was both.

  That was an idea she was going to ignore, at least for now.

  He was waiting for her on the passenger side of the truck so he could help her back in, and then hurried over to his side. As he shifted into gear and headed back towards town, he said, “I was just thinking while you were grabbing your purse…you should probably stay out at the house. You don’t have a car to drive back and forth from town, and there’s no car rental agency here. You’d have to go over to Franklin or back to Boise to find a rental car to drive, and I just don’t see the point. To be honest, Carmelita loves having someone else to hover over besides me. She used to have the whole Miller family to take care of, so just me by myself is boring the hell out of her. I’m expecting her to adopt a herd of cats any day now, just to have something to do.”

  Jennifer turned in the passenger seat to stare at Stetson openly. “Where is Mr. This-is-Not-a-Guest-House and what have you done with him?”

  The tips of his ears grew red. “I…yeah,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have…your arrival was not something I’d exactly been looking forward to.” He grimaced in her general direction. “I was kind of a jackass when you showed up.”

  Which, Stetson being of the male variety, meant that was as good of an apology as she was going to get. She nodded her acceptance. “Well, I’m thrilled with the idea if you’re okay with it. I normally don’t stay with clients, but Carmelita’s cooking is loads better than anything I can find in town, and the guest room you have me staying in is adorable. I’ve never seen anything like it in real life. Those roses on the wall – are they hand painted?”

  He nodded, a smile of pride spreading across his face, his shoulders easing now that the embarrassment of almost having to say sorry had passed. “My grandma painted those. I never met her…she died in childbirth with my dad. But she had a creative streak a mile wide, and apparently got the hankering to paint that bedroom one day. She wasn’t one to slap a coat of white paint on something, though, and before long, there were roses everywhere. My mom always said that she wanted a girl so someone else could appreciate those roses the way she did, but I was their last hope of that happening, and…well, I’m not a girl.”

  She bust up laughing, taking in his rugged, stubble-covered jaw and muscles flexing under the worn fabric of his jeans. “I wasn’t too worried on that topic, but I’m glad to know for sure.”

  “Disappointing females since 1990 – that’s my motto in life.”

  “I’m sure your mom was glad to have you,” Jennifer protested politely.

  Stetson shrugged. “My mom was happy, sure, although she would’ve been happier if I’d been a girl. But my dad…he was thrilled. He told me a few times that he’d screwed up with Wyatt and Declan – didn’t do things the way he wanted. He felt like he’d been given a chance to fix those mistakes with me. I honestly think that’s why he let me get cows – he never would’ve let Wyatt or Dec. He would’ve told them no, absolutely not. But with me, he was trying to be more liberal and open minded. It drives Wyatt and Declan completely mad, by the way. They say I got away with murder compared to them.” Stetson shrugged. “They’re probably right, although I don’t see as how that’s my fault. Well, we’re here!”

  Startled, Jennifer looked out the front windshield to see that they were parked in front of Frank’s Feed and Fuel. “Oh wow!” she yelped. “How did we…man, I was not paying attention to where we were going.” A truck ride with Stetson made the minutes just fly by. He could’ve been driving her to Canada, for all of the attention she’d paid to where they were going and what they were doing.

  A little terrifying, that.

  Stetson jumped out and hurried around to help her down. Sure, the skirt did make it difficult to maneuver, but she’d been able to get out of the truck back at the farm to fetch her purse all by herself. His help wasn’t strictly necessary, even if the truck was as oversized as Stetson was.

  As he swung her out of the cab and down to the ground, though, his hands lightly clasped around her waist, she got the impression that Stetson enjoyed helping her out of the truck a little more than he might’ve enjoyed helping a little old lady. The thought made the back of her neck tingle and she grinned to herself. Yeah, she might be wrong, but somehow, she was quite sure she wasn’t.

  All of which was weird, of course. She’d spent three years with Paul, who’d made sure to tell her in great detail just how undesirable she was. Having Stetson look at her with something other than pity and disgust…

  It was making her head hurt somethin’ fierce.

  She moved forward to grab her purse off the passenger-side floor of the truck when she brushed up against one very hard, very aroused Stetson. She shouldn’t have reacted – somewhere deep inside of her she knew that – but she couldn’t help herself. It was instinctual – she let out a little gasp and her eyes flew up to his to find he was staring down at her, naked hunger blazing in their depths.

  “I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t…but I can’t help myself,” he murmured, cupping her face in his hand and swiping the pad of his thumb across her lips. She trembled, need pouring through her. If they weren’t standing on Main Street in town, she’d be launching herself at him at that very moment.

  “I…I can’t help myself either,” she whispered back, her tongue flicking out and swiping across the calloused end of his thumb. His eyes went darker still and he pulled in a hiss of air.

  “Let’s go shopping, shall we?” he murmured, his voice hoarse with need. “Then we can stop by the motel to get your stuff, then head back to the farm.”

  The promise was obvious, if unspoken, about exactly what would happen once they got back to the farm.

  Jennifer wasn’t sure she’d live through the wait.

  Chapter 31

  Stetson

  They pulled up in front of the house, and Stetson hurried around to help her out of the truck, eager to put his hands back on her body, even if he was excusing it by using the cover of politeness to get away with it. Anything to put his hands on her body – anything at all, at this point. Watching her come out of the dressing room at Frank’s in Wranglers, her ass shown off to perfection…

  He held up his arms and she willingly moved into them. He swung her down to the ground, as surprised the second time as he had been the first. She was so light – like picking up a hay bale or a newborn calf. How was it t
hat she could be a full-grown woman?

  Or was she?

  He stared down at her in horror for a moment, finally blurting out, “How old are you?” He had terrifying visions dancing through his head of finding out that she was actually fifteen years old and just some sort of accountant prodigy.

  “I’m 24. Why?”

  “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, relief and shock pouring through him. “You’re only two years younger than me. How is that possible?”

  “I’m going to guess that my mother gave birth two years after your mother did,” Jennifer said dryly.

  “But you’re so small,” he protested. “And short. And not at all tall.”

  It was at this point that he decided that talking to Jennifer Kendall was just God’s way of keeping him humble. He was apparently completely incapable of speaking coherently around her.

  “It’s possible – just possible – that my father isn’t cousin to Godzilla,” she retorted. “It isn’t my fault all of the men in Sawyer are giants.” She crossed her arms and stared up at him defiantly, her green eyes flashing.

  Shit.

  He decided that rather than try to extract his size 17 boot from his mouth – which was probably an impossible task at this point anyway – he’d just sidetrack her. With any luck, she’d forget all about this conversation.

  Just to show he could, he scooped her up into his arms and started carrying her towards the farmhouse, ignoring her squeal of protests, mostly centering on the fact that they were leaving her bags behind. Whatever. They could fetch her clothes later. What he had in mind did not involve clothing.

  He looked up when he heard a little howl of delight, and with panic spreading through him, he saw Maggie Mae headed straight towards them, tail going a million miles a minute.