by Erin Wright
“Yeah, sure,” he said slowly, his stomach twisting a little at the idea of spending yet more money; his gut reaction to spending money of any kind on anything was instinctual and automatic. But, he began to reason through it, since she’d started actually billing customers on a regular basis, his bank account wasn’t quite as empty as it had been before. In fact, it could stand the onslaught of a shopping spree for cleaning supplies – not something he’d always been able to say.
Kind of a nice feeling, really. Unusual, but nice.
“Sure, just tell David down at the hardware store to put it on my account and send me a bill,” he said a little more firmly.
“Great!” she said, the brilliant smile back on her face. She headed up front and Adam got back to work on the morning check of his patients. When he’d finished, he headed up front and found that she was gone. She must’ve headed for the store already.
He shook his head, smiling to himself as he got in his truck to start making his rounds. The office was fine as it was, but if it made her happy to clean it…well shit, then it made him happy, too.
* * *
It had been a long day – but honestly, what day wasn’t a long day – and he stifled a yawn as he pulled to a stop in front of the clinic. Time to go inside, pick up his messages, do another check of the animals, and then stop out at his old place to milk the cow and goat and feed the chickens before he could, blessedly, go back to his mom’s and collapse into bed.
Was everyone this exhausted all the time? He felt like he was walking in a thick cloud, trying his damnedest to keep up with everything but slowly failing.
He forced himself out of the truck and towards the front door. One foot in front of the other. He could do this. He could totally—
He stopped.
This was his office, right?
He stepped back and looked over to the right, where WHITAKER’S VETERINARIAN CLINIC was emblazoned in big gold letters on the plate-glass windows. Yup, his office all right.
It just didn’t look like it.
Had the front glass door always been encased in aluminum? He didn’t remember it shining like that before. He had a vague recollection of it being gray before. Or black. Or some version of “grungy” anyway.
He gingerly pulled the door open, the doorbell overhead tinkling to announce his entrance, and Kylie looked up, huffing stray hairs out of her face. “Dammit!” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I was hoping to have it done before you got back. Is it really five already?”
But Adam couldn’t answer her. His eyes were too busy scanning the room. The cement-block walls, previously painted a dingy yellowish color, were now white. Shining, clean, brilliant white. “Did you paint in here?” he burst out, his nose wiggling as he tried to detect the odor of fresh paint in the air. Nothing. Just lemons and wildflowers.
She laughed. “I just scrubbed them,” she said with a huge grin and a shrug. “If I had to make a guess, I would say that was something that hadn’t been done in a while.”
The office was a disaster, to be honest. The left half of the room had been emptied, with everything shoved to the right side so she could do a thorough cleaning without anything getting in the way. It was the most orderly aftermath of a cleaning tornado he’d ever witnessed.
But the walls…and front windows…all of the nose prints from the countless dogs that’d passed through the clinic were gone. The black footprints, the hair everywhere…
It had all disappeared, like magic, under the hands of the most amazing employee he’d ever had the good luck to hire.
“Will you rent my farm from me?” he said, the words bursting from his lips impulsively. “Rent free. Just take care of the animals and the yard so I don’t have to.”
It was something he’d been telling himself that he absolutely, positively could not offer to her ever since the thought had first popped into his head, but looking around his clinic, he knew that it couldn’t be in better hands than hers. Hell, she’d probably have his hobby farm turning a profit within six months, if his clinic was anything to judge her by.
Her eyes grew wide. “Really?” she breathed, and then she threw herself at him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cried, quite literally, as tears streamed down her face.
He patted her awkwardly on the back. Gratitude he could handle, even if it was a little embarrassing. Tears, on the other hand…not his favorite.
She pulled back, snuffling and wiping at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I can’t even tell you how much this means to me,” she said through her tears, grinning at him. “I just…my mom last night…I…thank you!” she finally sputtered out.
He laughed a little, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “I don’t think I could find someone who’d take better care of it than you, honestly. Want to go tour it?” In for a penny, in for a pound. If he was going to offer her free rent, he might as well go show her around, right?
“Absolutely!” she said, spinning back to the desk and grabbing her purse and lunch bag from underneath it. “Is it okay if I leave the clinic like this until Monday?” she asked, coming to a stop and looking around the torn-apart office.
Adam shrugged. “If I get calls on the weekend, I normally just go out to a client’s place. I don’t have many customers come here on the weekend. It’ll be fine.”
She grinned. “Then I’m ready whenever you are.”
He started to head towards the truck so they could drive out to his farm, but he stopped short, remembering in the nick of time. “Wait, I need to go look at the patients in the back real quick and then we can go. Did Ollie come in today?”
“Yeah, he was here until just before you arrived,” Kylie said, trailing along behind him as he made an about-face to head down the hallway. “He said he needed to leave a little early tonight.”
Adam nodded, getting to work checking on the animals. It was Friday night, and Ollie was a teenager. For all Adam knew, the kid had a hot date. Hell, stranger things had happened. Maybe.
And as he worked his way around the room, he could see that Ollie had done his job perfectly, as always. Between Kylie taking care of the front and Ollie taking care of the back, life was just a little more manageable. And if Kylie could move out to the homestead and start taking care of his animals, that’d be one more huge load off his plate.
He could almost feel his shoulders relax from the relief of having so many stressors removed from them. He could breathe a little deeper, and the constant knot in his stomach loosened up just a smidge.
Damn, this was a glorious feeling. A man could get used to this.
They headed out the front door, flipping off the lights and the open sign as they went, and Kylie climbed into the passenger side of his truck, tactfully moving all of the random paraphernalia off her seat before sliding into place. “Sorry,” he said, a little embarrassed as he put his truck into reverse and backed out into the street. “I don’t have passengers very often. It’s an easy place to store things.”
She smiled over at him. “No worries,” she said. “You don’t normally act like a taxi service. It’s all good.”
The businessman inside of him was screaming and yelling at him that he was being an idiot for giving away his rental property for free – again – but even as he thought the words, he couldn’t make himself regret the offer. The 100-watt smile on Kylie’s face was all the payment he needed.
Bank account be damned.
Chapter 12
Kylie
They pulled up in front of an older farmhouse, long on charm, short on paint. And window screens. But there were fun wooden scallops that ran the length of the porch and a gorgeous front door that Kylie was positive was original to the house, making it easy to overlook its few shortcomings.
“It needs some love and attention,” Adam began apologetically as Kylie hopped out of the truck and hurried up to the house. “I’ve had a lot on my plate lately and it’s been easy to—”
“No worries, I promise!”
she broke in. A little peeling paint? Hell, she could live with that.
In fact, she could probably scrape and paint the place this summer. If she did the legwork, maybe Adam would provide the supplies. Her life was at critical levels of boredom – other than work at the clinic, she didn’t have much else going on. Fixing up the house would give her something to do in the evenings and weekends. Her only other hobby of late seemed to be reworking her budget, but she could only do that so many times before there was nothing left to tweak.
Money did not appear from thin air, no matter how many times she tried to make it happen.
He unlocked the front door, which swung open to reveal a small entryway that opened up into a living room with what appeared to be original hardwood floors. A beat-up couch paired with a beat-up wing chair graced the room, both of them looking like they’d seen better years. “The furniture comes along with,” Adam said as she looked around, oohing and aahing over the original wooden baseboards. “The former tenant is moving in with her boyfriend, so she didn’t need to take it with her. She said to leave it behind for…well, for you, I suppose.”
Kylie stopped trailing her hands over the nicked and scuffed woodwork to look back at him. He had that tight smile on his face that wasn’t even vaguely convincing, and this time, Kylie was absolutely sure that the previous tenant was more than just a tenant. Were they in love? Did she dump him for this boyfriend dude? Kylie felt a little anger and indignation well up inside of her on his behalf. Who would choose someone else over Adam? He was kind and thoughtful and giving and sweet and handsome as sin and…
She stopped herself right there. Granted, it was about ten thoughts too late, but at least she was trying to stop. She couldn’t let herself look at her boss that way. Especially not if he was going to be her boss and her landlord.
If she fell in love with him…oh Lordy, wouldn’t that just wreak some havoc. What would happen if it didn’t work out? He could fire her and evict her in one fell swoop.
Falling for Adam Whitaker would be one of the worst ideas of her short life, and truly, that was saying something.
She smiled at him, scolded herself when her heart went into overdrive as he sent her a heart-stopping smile in return, and then turned towards the kitchen. She walked past the scarred dining room table and into a country kitchen – not horrifically small, but definitely on the efficient side. She looked around, an honest grin spreading across her face; not forced, not required, not trying to hide anything, but rather a joyful grin as she took it all in.
“Oh, Adam!” she exclaimed as she began opening and closing cupboards and drawers, even peering into the fridge.
When she’d left Oregon, she’d been forced to leave most of her kitchen equipment behind, too. That night of frantic packing, trying to escape, there’d been a brief moment of levity when her roommate had held up a meat baster that Kylie was leaving behind in a kitchen drawer. “Kylie, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? It looks like a tranquilizer needle for a horse!”
Yeah, all of that specialized equipment was definitely lost on her former roommate, and no doubt, she’d already sold all of it on Craigslist and bought pizzas from Domino’s with the cash. But here was Kylie’s chance to rebuild all of that. For the first time in her life, she’d have her own home.
She spun in a circle and grinned up at Adam. He had a funny look on his face when he said slowly, “You called me Adam. That’s the first time you’ve ever called me that without me prompting you to.”
She shrugged, her eyes dropping to the ground. She probably shouldn’t have called him that, honestly, but she’d been caught up in the joy of the moment. It was much better to keep him at arm’s length. Formality was going to be the only way to get through with her heart still in one piece.
She knew all of that. And yet…
“Thank you for this…Adam,” she said softly, looking back up into his warm, brown eyes. “I cannot tell you how much it means to me. Truly. I will be in debt to you for the rest of my life.”
A flustered grin spread across his face. “You’re gonna be a big help to me, honestly,” he rushed to assure her. “After the former tenant moved out, it’s fallen on me to take care of this place and these animals again, and it’s slowly killing me. Either I find someone to take this over, or I sell it. I can’t keep spreading myself this thin. But…I’m not ready to sell it yet,” a shadow crossed his eyes at the admission, “so I’m thrilled to have you helping me out.”
She wondered again about the secrets this man in front of her held close to his chest. He was friendly and kind and thoughtful to everyone, but she wondered if that was a front somehow; a way of hiding the painful spots in his past.
If there was one thing Kylie understood, it was pain emanating out from the past to haunt a person. It was the kind of pain that a soul didn’t get over easily.
She rubbed her belly absentmindedly. It wasn’t a big house, but honestly, she didn’t need a big house. She just needed enough room for her and the baby, and this would do that and more.
“Can we check out the upstairs?” she asked. “I’m assuming the bedrooms are up there.”
His smile came back full force, happy and believable again. “Absolutely! There’s this antique brass bed up there that you’ll enjoy; from what I understand, the people who originally built this place ordered the bed out of a Sears catalog and had it delivered here on the train. You really can’t get much more historical than that.”
She followed him up the creaking wooden stairs, her eyes trained on the easy movement of his hips as they went.
She gulped.
She should definitely not be calling him Adam. Not if she wanted to keep her sanity.
Chapter 13
Adam
He opened up the gate to the small pasture that was connected to the barn and let Kylie pass by him before closing it behind them. The chickens went crazy, running over, wings outstretched as they competed for space next to him. They knew what the arrival of a human meant: Food.
“Oh, they’re friendly!” Kylie said, leaning over to pet one that had gotten up close to her to investigate her shoes.
“Don’t—!” Adam exclaimed, just as the chicken reached out and pecked Kylie’s hand. Hard. Kylie pulled back with a yelp, and scared, the chicken took off running, her ass waddling as she hurried as fast as her two short legs would take her across the green grass. Kylie looked down with a rueful smile at her hand, a small stream of blood running down it.
“So, not that friendly?” she said wryly.
He laughed.
“Not pets, that’s for sure. They tend to think that anything you’re putting within reach of their beaks must be food. She wasn’t trying to hurt you; she was just trying to eat you.”
It was Kylie’s turn to laugh. “You’re really good at reassuring people, you know that? So, you’ve got killer chickens who want to eat me. What else do you have here for me to take care of?” She’d pulled a used Kleenex out of her sweatshirt pocket and had wrapped it around her small wound; Adam was happy to see that she didn’t break down into histrionics over it. Once again, he patted himself on the back for his amazing hiring skills. Forget 50-year-old women; he didn’t figure they could get any better than Kylie.
“Over there,” he said, pointing to Skunk who was placidly grazing and ignoring the whole ruckus, “is the milk cow. Her name is Skunk. She was named by a little boy who thought that everything that was black and white must be a skunk.” She laughed, and encouraged, he pointed to the goat. “And that is Dumbass.”
At the sound of her name, the goat looked up and then came trotting over, apparently believing that if they were going to talk about her, pettings were obviously part of the deal. Meanwhile, Kylie was just staring at him, caught between laughing at what he said and gasping in horror. “Dumbass? Really? You named a goat Dumbass?!”
The old girl had put her head underneath Kylie’s arm and was quite forcefully pushing it up in the air, begging, goat style,
for a nice head rub. Kylie must’ve found just the right spot at the base of her horns because Dumbass began leaning into the pettings with all her might. Adam was a little afraid she’d knock Kylie on her ass at this rate.
He shrugged in response to Kylie’s question. “The old tenant…she renamed her Ivy, but honestly, that’s too nice of a name for this ol’ girl. Just wait until—”
Dumbass grabbed the bottom of Kylie’s sweatshirt and began pulling it into her mouth, chewing happily as she went.
“—Until she tries to eat your clothes,” Adam finished, too late. Kylie was laughing again as she began pushing on Dumbass, trying to wrestle her clothes back out of the goat’s mouth, and her white, soft, rounded belly shone in the bright sunshine. Actually, Adam was a little surprised by how round her stomach was. That must be where she carried all of her weight, because there was hardly anything at all to the rest of her.
That definitely wasn’t the body shape of her mom, who tended to be round all over, so Kylie must’ve gotten that from her father. No wonder she wore so many sweatshirts and oversized tops. She probably thought she was getting fat. Women. Adam thought her rounded stomach was adorable, but of course he couldn’t tell his employee that.
Absolutely no mention of body parts, adorable or otherwise, was going to come up in his conversations with Kylie, that was for damn sure.
Out in the sunshine, watching Kylie trying to pet Skunk, who let her for a moment before starting to wander away again, pooping with every step, Kylie laughing her ass off at the casualness of the whole affair…the past that had begun to haunt him inside of the house slipped away.
There for a minute, he’d been stuck in the past, hearing the voice of his dead wife as she exclaimed over every little feature of the house, making plans about how to turn it into a home for the Whitaker family that was sure to come. She’d loved to bake and had waved away his concerns about the size of the kitchen, telling him that it was efficient and smart in its design, so she’d make it work.
