by Sarah Title
Why the hell would Keith be telling her when the hairdresser was coming to town? Probably because of the way her brown eyes shone when she looked at Luke. Keith was ashamed to admit he was a little jealous. Of course, her eyes shone when she looked at the spread at dinner, too, much to Miss Libby’s delight. Mal said she hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in years. So much for a domestic goddess to straighten Luke out. Well, hopefully she would at least be able to keep up with him.
He opened the side door of the house and was greeted with much tail wagging and barking. Peanut jumped up, almost knocking Keith over with his one front paw as he made a grab for the bacon in Keith’s left hand. Keith pushed him down with a stern, “No.” Peanut looked chagrined, and gazed hopefully at the biscuit Keith unwrapped. “Dog, when are you gonna learn?” He laughed this time as Peanut jumped up to snag the crumb Keith threw him. Peanut might have only three legs, but he acted like a four-legged dog. A four-legged lapdog puppy, really. Keith would have been more amused if the ninety pounds of self-deluded canine hadn’t just knocked him over, grabbed the bacon out of his hand, and run toward the house.
Mal was having the weirdest dream. She was a kid, running through the sprinklers at her parents’ house in Connecticut, when Michael pulled up in his black convertible and honked the horn. Suddenly she was a teenager, home from college for the summer, running out to meet him in cutoffs and flip-flops. Michael looked her up and down, then reached under the seat and pulled out a pistol and shot her—but it was a water pistol, and she got soaked. He got out of the car and soaked her and soaked her, knocking her down and sitting on her chest, soaking her and licking her face, and he had the most terrible morning breath . . .
Mal opened her eyes and looked at the giant furry face on top of hers only to get a lick in the eye. As her thoughts came into focus, she realized what the heavy weight on her chest was—a giant licking shag rug with terrible morning breath.
Keith ran through the open kitchen door whose screen was now sporting an impromptu doggy hatch. How far could Peanut have gone on three damn legs? He ran through the first floor and was just headed up the stairs when he heard a blood-curdling scream. Mal.
He bolted up the stairs into Mal’s room and saw her cowering in the corner of her bed, her legs bent in front of her to fend off Peanut’s aggressive friendliness. She was clearly terrified. “Peanut, come!” he shouted. Peanut turned and looked at Keith, gave Mal one last lick on the nose, and ran to Keith.
Katie had come up behind him, rumpled and bleary-eyed. “What the hell is going on?”
“Take Peanut downstairs.”
“Hey, Mal, are you OK? You look a little green.”
Mal was frozen in her defensive position on the bed.
“Take the dog out, Kate.”
Katie turned and obeyed Keith, Peanut limping happily as she led him by the collar. Keith turned to Mal and approached her gently. “Mal? Can you hear me?” She stared blankly at the doorway even though he was fully in the room. She was in a full-blown panic. “Mal, it was a dog. His name is Peanut. He’s gone now; Katie took him outside. Mal, the dog is gone.”
She turned slowly and looked up at him and whispered, “I think I’m going to throw up now.”
She should have been embarrassed that her fiancé’s brother was witnessing her morning breath, ill-fitting sweats, and paralyzing fear of dogs, but all Mal knew was that if she didn’t get to the bathroom soon, she would have something much grosser to be embarrassed about. Last night’s dinner roiled in her stomach, fighting with the aftereffects of her panic. She looked up to Keith, begging for help like he’d helped save her from the dog. “I think I’m going to throw up now.”
Before she knew what was happening, she was gently lifted off the bed and carried into the bathroom. Keith set her down on the rug, lifted the toilet seat, and . . . did not turn away in horror as she retched into the bowl. Instead, he got a glass of water from the sink, then kneeled down next to her, rubbing her back and holding her hair out of the way.
Wasn’t that one of the tests to see if your man was worthwhile? Didn’t she read that in Cosmo? Throw up in front of him, and if he runs away, it was never meant to be, but if he holds your hair and rubs your back, he’s yours to keep? Unfortunately, this one was not hers in the first place, but damn, his hands were comforting, warm on her cold neck, gently kneading the tension out of her shoulders.
“I’m sorry about the dog. Peanut hasn’t come to terms with his size just yet.”
“S’okay. It’s a farm,” Mal answered weakly.
“Still. I shouldn’t bring my work home.”
Mal blinked up at him for a second. “That huge thing is named Peanut?”
“Well, yeah,” Keith said self-consciously. “He was little when we found him.”
Mal smiled wanly and reached for her toothbrush. “Sorry for freaking out just there.”
“No, don’t apologize, it’s not—I mean, I should have been more careful.”
Mal tried to talk while brushing her teeth. “Mmmm-hmmmmmm-mm-mm-mmm.”
Keith looked at her patiently. She spit into the sink. She was still shaky, but the mint of the toothpaste tasted good. “I don’t usually get sick. Usually I just stand there paralyzed while people tell me how nice their dog is.”
“Well, I’ve seen how serious fear of animals can be, even if it seems unwarranted.”
“I just, well, ah, I don’t know. I’ve just been afraid for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my neighbor had a really old mutt. He was mean, but I was little so I tried to pet him. He bit my chin.” She pointed to a miniscule scar on the edge of her chin. “It scared me, and it hurt. And, obviously, I’m scarred for life.” She managed a weak laugh.
“Shh, it’s OK,” Keith said, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. They were covered in goose bumps, and she realized that she had begun shivering as she told the story.
“Peanut really is a very nice dog. One day, when you’re ready, you can meet him properly. See if you guys get along.”
She turned around and looked at Keith, this sweet, sexy man who held her hair when she threw up and didn’t laugh at her fear of dogs. “Thank you,” she said, and took his hand.
That’s where Miss Libby found them as she climbed up the stairs with a mug of tea. “You poor thing,” she said, elbowing Keith out of the way and handing the mug to Mal. “Drink this; it’ll settle your stomach.” She put a protective arm around Mal’s waist and led her back into the bedroom.
“See you,” Keith practically grunted as he brushed past them in the bathroom doorway.
“That boy and his dog,” Miss Libby said, watching him go.
Mal smiled, then laughed, and put her head down. Miss Libby brought her arms up and began to rock back and forth, rubbing Mal’s back. It felt good and comforting, but not nearly as good as Keith’s arms had, her voice not nearly as soothing as Keith’s. Mal’s laughter suddenly choked her and turned into tears.
“Whoa, whoa, hey, none of that,” said Miss Libby, lifting her chin up and wiping her tears with her thumb. “What’s this about?”
Mal tried to explain; she wasn’t entirely sure herself. Every time she tried to articulate why she was crying, it just got worse. She didn’t like lying and it was stressing her out, she was angry that she was such a chicken around dogs, she was sad that she couldn’t have a normal fiancé whose family would take her in because they were engaged for real, but mostly she was frustrated that while she was engaged to one handsome Carson brother, she was thinking about another one entirely.
She decided to keep that last part to herself.
Maybe all of it, but especially that last part.
“I’m sorry. I’m causing such a fuss.”
“None of that,” Miss Libby clucked. “It’s nice to have someone new to fuss over. It’s my bread and butter, sweetie. Besides, you make me feel appreciated.” She smiled. “Now, I have some bad news about Luke,” Miss Libby said kindly.
Mal’s eyes
widened in panic. “What happened to Luke? Is he OK?”
“Oh, he’s fine. But did you know that I don’t sleep well? I have a tendency to putter around the house in the middle of the night.” Mal nodded, not understanding. “So I saw him leave your room at three o’clock this morning.”
Mal blushed.
“That’s right, you should look chagrined. But Luke told me nothing untoward happened, and I believe him. Not that it would do much good. Anyway, he told me he had to leave town for a few days.”
“What? Why?”
“You might as well get used to it if you’re not already. That boy cannot sit still. He’s always out, chasing his next big thing. He told me he had a few things to take care of and he’ll be back in a few days, and in the meantime, I’m to take good care of you.” She pulled a piece of notebook paper out of her robe pocket. “And he gave me this for you.”
Mal—
I know you’ll be surprised to wake up alone, but don’t worry. I have a big opportunity I have to follow up on or it will fall through. Wipe that worried look off your face; it has nothing to do with Michael. You’re fine with my family and I’ll be back soon. I love you, darlin’, even if it’s not that way.
Luke
“Did you read this?” she asked Miss Libby.
“Is it addressed to me?” she responded. Mal looked down at the note, her eyes watering. “Oh, now don’t you start that again. He’ll be back. He wouldn’t have left you here with us if he wasn’t coming back.”
“Just residual effects of the shock, I guess,” Mal lied, wiping her eyes. “And the kindness.”
Miss Libby looked like she didn’t believe her for a second, but she took her hand. “I am sorry for the shock, and we’ll see what we can do about keeping that dog out of here—”
“Oh, no, don’t do anything to Peanut on my account. I’m just a guest. And Keith really likes that dog, I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“If you saw the mess that Peanut left on my floors, you would know that your trouble is nothing compared to his. But all right, I’ll let him off the hook. But, sweetheart, you’re going to have to get used to it.”
“The dog?”
“The kindness.”
Chapter 5
Mal walked out the kitchen door and stood on the step for a second, inhaling the crisp fall air deeply. She buttoned her new corduroy jacket and wrapped the thin plaid scarf around her neck. It felt warmer than it had yesterday; of course, today she was wearing jeans. The sun was bright and the hills were green and so, OK, her fake fiancé had abandoned her for unknown but, according to Libby, not unexpected reasons—but there were horses. She smiled to herself as she crossed the yard toward the fenced-in enclosure where several horses were grazing. They snorted and flicked their ears as she approached. Was it bad to feed horses? Did they bite? What did horses eat?
They were chewing on the short grass near the fence, one of them trying to stick its snout underneath to try to reach the taller grass on the other side. Mal pulled a handful up and leaned her arm over the fence. “Come here, boy! Here’s some delicious grass for you. Please don’t bite my hand off.” The horse sniffed, blowing a warm wet breath onto her hand, then opened its lips to take the grass from her.
“Whoa, you have really big teeth. I mean, you’re very beautiful and powerful. And thank you for not biting me.” She stood on the bottom rung of the fence to lean over and pet the horse’s back. His hair was coarser than she expected, but it was smooth, almost like skin. “You’re a strong one, aren’t you? I bet you get all the ladies.”
“That’s actually a female horse.”
Mal started, standing up and pulling her hand back, nearly falling off the fence in the process. Keith stood on the other side of the fence, holding a beat-up-looking tin bucket, which he placed in front of the horse, who began to drink.
“How can you tell?” Mal asked. Then, blushing stupidly, said,
“Oh. Duh. I didn’t think to, um, check.”
Keith pushed his cap back and scratched his forehead. He wore scuffed-up boots, one of those quilt-lined plaid shirts, and jeans that looked like they would hold the shape of his hips even after he took them off. He looked sort of deliciously rugged. Like he could be Mr. October in a Handsome Farm Guy Calendar for Women Who Liked Their Dirty Calendars Modest. And Scowling. He was definitely scowling at her.
“OK, well, I didn’t come out here to molest the horses. Just, you know, looking around.” He didn’t say anything, but continued to look at her. She held on to the top rail of the fence and looked around in what she hoped—really hoped—was a cool and casual assessment of her surroundings. “Very nice. Very horse farmy.”
“Did you need something, Mal?”
Just a new life, that’s it, thanks. “No, I just thought I’d come out here, see if you need any help or anything.”
“You know anything about horses?”
“Well, no.”
“How were you planning on helping?”
“I don’t know; don’t you need slop hauled or something?”
“This isn’t a pig farm. We don’t have slop.”
She was beginning to think he wasn’t being charmingly teasing, the way Luke was with her. That he was maybe being sort of a jerk.
She should just turn her back on him, leave him standing there glowering in the morning sun with his stupid jeans and his stupid butt and his stupid rugged good looks. But she had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Luke was gone, Libby was too polite to say that she had too much work to do to entertain her, and she didn’t even have a good book to read.
“Listen, Mal, I’ve got too much work to do to entertain you.” Apparently he wasn’t too polite.
“I’m not asking to be entertained, Keith.” She practically spat his name. Man, this guy pissed her off. “I’m just trying to be helpful. I know I don’t know what I’m doing, but surely there’s some mindless physical task you can give me that will make me tired enough that I don’t go crazy sitting on my hands waiting for Luke to come back, since that is all anyone seems to expect me to do.”
She had worked herself up into quite a lather. Her knuckles were white on the fence rail, and she was breathing hard.
“Maybe Libby needs help in the kitchen.”
“Libby sent me out here. To enjoy myself.” She clutched the fence post a little harder.
“Where’s Katie?”
“She’s out riding.”
“Maybe you can go shopping or something.”
“I hate shopping. Look, it’s not that I’m not grateful for your family’s hospitality, because I am. Really. But I have a lot of nervous energy at the moment and, frankly, if you don’t give me something to do right now, I’m just going to follow you around until you do.”
“I don’t really have anything for you to do,” Keith said, feeling very nervous. He really didn’t want her following him around. She was starting to look a little cute to him.
“Well, what were you about to do?”
“Muck out the stalls, exercise the horses a bit.”
“Oh, mucking out the stalls, I’ve seen that in movies. That’s just, like, with a shovel or something, right? I can do that. Then you can exercise the horses and you’ll have extra time to stand in the corner and give me scowling looks before dinner.”
Keith looked at her, considering. She was flushed with her barely controlled anger and her hair had come loose from her ponytail. As a strand blew across her forehead, she brushed it back, losing her balance on the fence post and landing on her feet, ungracefully, on the ground. Dammit, she was cute.
“I’ll show you how to muck out the stalls.”
Chapter 6
Stall-mucking smelled a lot worse than Mal thought it would. She thought it was maybe just shoveling out the old hay and sweeping up the dirt and putting down some more hay. Somehow it hadn’t quite occurred to her that a horse’s stall was also its bathroom.
“I guess you can’t just let them out every
time they have to go,” she mused as Keith handed her a heavy pitchfork.
He just sort of looked at her, his eyebrows raised, and handed her a pair of dirty work gloves. “You sure you don’t want to change your pants?”
“No, they’re just jeans. They can get dirty.” And she had no other pants to change into. She was already feeling large and unwieldy in Luke’s old rubber boots because Katie’s were too small. Besides, the boots came almost up to her knees—how deep was she going to be mucking?
Keith sighed and lined up the shovel, the broom, and pushed the wheelbarrow to the entrance of the first stall. He walked to the end of the barn and grabbed a hay bale, lifting it by two invisible pieces of twine, his back straining. Jeez, he was strong.
“So,” he said, dropping the bale at her feet, “you’re just gonna put the dirty straw in here”—he indicated the rusty green wheelbarrow—“then spread out some new clean straw. Call me when you’re done, I’ll move the load to the manure pile.”
“I think I can move a wheelbarrow. It’s not like driving a stick shift.”
Keith considered her for a moment; obviously, he was not impressed by her physical strength. “OK, just don’t fill it. These things are hard to steer when they’re full.” He kicked the wheelbarrow like an old man kicks the tires of a car, showing off, testing it out.
The wheelbarrow fell over.
She thought maybe Keith was blushing a little as he bent to set it to rights. Man, he looked good in those jeans. She shook her head. Focus on the manure pile.
