Take Me Home

by Abby Knox

  Oh, but they had work to do.

  “Before I forget, I have something else for you. Besides the chicks.”

  Back in the barn, he led her to the far wall, to the coat hook. He removed the pale pink cowgirl hat. “Your work uniform. If you want it.”

  She laughed. “I love it! And what choice do I have? I have exactly two sets of clothes to my name right now, and one set is a uniform.”

  Shit. Why hadn’t he thought to pick out some shirts and jeans for her while he was out this morning? But he didn’t know her jean size. The memory of her naked ass in the mirror this morning told him probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a size called “perfect size for my hands to grab on to while I’m tasting her in the shower.” He wondered if sweet old Edna down at the ladies dress shop downtown would be scandalized by that.

  “We’ll get you some proper jeans and work boots tomorrow, OK?”

  Maggie took the hat and placed it firmly on her head and smiled at him again. “I feel like I should be on a horse now.”

  “Soon,” he said, and winked.

  Jackson

  In the week that followed Maggie accepting this new job as farmhand, the pair of them worked side by side through the slowly warming spring days. She could go as long as he could, without a break until dark. They fixed fences, cut alfalfa, oats and other feed for the animals, baled hay, cleared brush, picked wild berries to freeze, all while Maggie put a name to every animal they encountered. The chicks were all names from her favorite shows growing up: Phoebe, Rachel, Monica, Ursula, Elaine, Brenda, Kelly… There were more, but that’s all he could remember.

  The only thing Jack and Maggie had argued about were her expenses. She didn’t want to spend money on new clothes until she was paid. He respected her independence and her desire to not leech off him, but he finally insisted she take the business credit card and get whatever she needed. Instead, she had given him her sizes, saying, “Use your judgment,” and he’d bought a few things for her around town. Jack was hesitant at first, but after a while it pleased him seeing her in jeans, T-shirts, flannels and boots that he’d picked out for her. It was odd, but when he held up a purple checked flannel shirt and imagined how it might look next to her flawless skin and blazing red hair, it was quite a turn-on. He would keep that fun fact to himself and ensure he kept things as professional as possible. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold out before doing something that could get him walloped with a sexual harassment case, but in the meantime, he was happy.

  Maggie was easy to work with. She chatted with him and she made him laugh, but she worked hard and didn’t waste time. Jack felt the two of them worked well together, but damn if he didn’t get a longing every time the wind caught in her tumble of curls and he had to stop himself from reaching over and sinking his fingers into her locks. And not to mention watching her muck out stalls. Granted, perhaps the least sexy chore he could think of on the farm, but damn if he didn’t get a raging hard-on every time her back was turned and he caught a glimpse of her bent over in those tall polka-dotted muck boots she’d picked out. He’d been embarrassed paying for those at Tractor Supply, but now it was worth every penny and every side-eye he’d gotten from the grizzled old dudes in their Carhartts.

  But one unseasonably warm afternoon in the hayloft, long after ditching their coats, the sexual frustration was starting to get to Jack. But instead of trying to seduce her, he picked an argument as they baled hay for feed and straw for bedding.

  “We don’t name the goats. They’re not pets.”

  “Says you,” she argued saliently. “I’ll let you name the boys if I can name all the girls.”

  To Jack’s ears that sounded like what a wife might say during pregnancy. He sort of liked the idea of getting her good and pregnant as soon as humanly possible. Even with as old as he was, he had the instinct to protect the land for years to come with several children. He fought back thoughts like this, but it was futile.

  And man, the thought of this angelic woman before him sporting a sweetly round belly made him as hard as all get out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jack snapped out of his hazy fantasy.

  “Nothing,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  “I was just asking what you did with the old wether goat we had. What’s up with you? You’ve been acting weird ever since we started working up in the loft. You got stories of rolling around in the hay up here, old man?”

  Dammit, what was she trying to do to him? “No, I don’t have stories. And I sold the wether. No point in having wethers around here when I’m trying to breed and raise milking goats.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said, cutting her eyes at him. “Haylofts need good rolling-around stories. And every farm worth its weight needs a pet.”

  “I have Ranger for a pet.”

  “Ranger is a minder for the goats. He doesn’t even sleep on your bed,” she replied.

  “And as far as rolling in the hay,” Jack continued, “I prefer more doing, less talking about that kind of thing.” He put down his pitchfork, took off his hat, and wiped his soaked forehead.

  Maggie turned to him, her eyes searing into his. “Is that so?”

  “Yep.” Without thinking, Jack began unbuttoning his shirt. He threw it out through the window and it sailed down to the farm trailer below. Then he pulled off his white undershirt over his head.

  Maggie’s eyes got as big as dinner plates. “What are you doing?”

  “I usually take off my shirt; it gets hot and stuffy up here. Unless you have a problem?”

  “No…no problem.”

  “Good.”

  “Great. Good. Now I can get back to work.”

  “You do that.”

  It was working. He could feel her staring as he worked. It was a lowlife trick, testing her reaction to him taking his shirt off. But he was really and truly overheated. From the work, and from being around her.

  Maggie

  Really? How could she be expected to go back to work with him over there baling hay with no shirt on?

  And the way he’d just looked at her, it was like he was challenging her not to look at his bare, suntanned shoulders, his chest, his abs… Oh Lord…it wasn’t fair for an Iowa bachelor farmer in his 40s to look this good. Weren’t they supposed to be a little paunchy from a steady diet of beer and sweet corn? Jack was, in fact, hard as stone from working the farm all by himself. He had the body of a lean CrossFitter—but one who doesn’t spend all day trying to convince her to do CrossFit.

  And wasn’t he supposed to have a farmer tan? In fact, it looked as if he spent a lot of his day working shirtless under the sun.

  She watched him tie up the small bales of straw, and the long muscles in his shoulders rippled, daring her not to stare. The sunlight glistened off his back as he bent over to lift the bale up over his head like a Greek god. And when he heaved it out of the loft onto the waiting trailer below, he looked ten times more powerful than a simple goat farmer from Iowa should ever look.

  Was he for real, or was he doing all of this to get a reaction out of her?

  Would she even be able to work with him while he strutted around like that?

  What exactly was he after in hiring her?

  Was she being sexually harassed, in a legal sense?

  If so, did she mind so much?

  She knew one thing. She was feeling hot and damp everywhere. Then, she suddenly felt cold and clammy. Jack’s mighty beautiful body turned blurry. Her head was light and dizzy. Her brain went foggy. Her knees felt like wet noodles. Before she hit the floor, she knew exactly what was wrong. She wasn’t used to working in the sun and heat, let alone physical labor. She should have been drinking more water.

  I’m so fired, she thought as her body hit the floor.

  Jackson

  Jack turned back from tossing down a bale and crossed back to the loose mountain of hay when he stopped dead in his tracks. Maggie was lying on her side, her hat tumbled off her head.

&
nbsp; “Shit!”

  Jack tossed aside his pitchfork and ran to her, helping her sit upright with her head between her knees. She felt frail in his arms. He mentally kicked himself for not pushing her to drink more water and working her so hard. As he fanned her with one arm, he felt something warm and wet with his other arm. He glanced at her back and saw that she had blood seeping through her shirt.

  “What the hell…”

  He saw now that she had landed on her pitchfork and the tines had stuck her right in the back of her shoulder. Looking down, he deduced that when he had sat her upright, he had inadvertently pulled the tines out of her shoulder.

  Great, now she was exhausted from the heat and injured. She was going to quit on him the moment she came to.

  He glanced around quickly for something to stop the blood, but there was nothing. He would have happily stripped off his shirt and made a bandage with it, but his shirt was already down in the trailer below, and he didn’t dare leave her alone. His basest instinct was to not let her out of his sight for a second. So he did the only thing he could think of. He gently laid her down on her side in the hay, then darted over to grab his water bottle. He returned to her side and ripped off her T-shirt without even thinking twice. The fear and desperation had given Jack super strength, and the seams of her T-shirt gave in under his pull like it was no more than tissue paper. He pulled the fabric into strips, and then, holding her limp body against his chest, he poured water from his stainless-steel bottle down her back, cleaning the wound.

  The ice-cold water on her back woke her up, and she stiffened against his chest, gasped, then sat up straight. “Alex, what’s happening? You have my money? Oh, thank you, I’m so sorry, I love you so much.”

  Oh great. She was delirious. Heat exhaustion? Sunstroke? She kept babbling as he worked the strips into bandages, lifting her arm to wrap them though her armpit and securing the bandages in knots at the front of her shoulder.

  When she was as well bandaged as he could possible get her in the hayloft, she was still mumbling nonsense about somebody named Alex.

  Whoever that was, Jack decided he was a real cad. He may be old-fashioned, but if there was some guy named Alex borrowing money from her and taking advantage of her feelings, he would happily put an end to those shenanigans.

  It was then that Jack realized something. She now topless except for a bright white, lacy, barely there strappy thing that was more like a very expensive piece of lingerie than a bra someone would wear to bale hay.

  “Oh Alex, why haven’t you called? I’m so sorry, I’ll try to be cool. I’ll come with you on the tour, is that what you want? I’m sorry for leaving…”

  It was then she started nuzzling his neck, her half-bare breasts tickling his chest as her lips kissed his shoulder. He rather liked it. No, he definitely loved the hell out of the feeling—and the very idea—of Maggie kissing him. Her lacy bra could be easily shed in an instant.

  But this was wrong. He had to stop her and make her come around.

  “Alex, I’m so sorry.”

  Jack hoped at some point to kick Alex’s ass from here to the creek. Maggie’s lips were now traveling across his shoulder, over his collarbone and all over his chest. She murmured things between kisses. The feel of her breath, her lips, the sound of her voice, the sound of her kisses. It was all too much. It was better than he had imagined in his head. There was that brain fog again.

  Jack, you need to make her come around. This is wrong.

  Yes, it was wrong. Definitely very, very wrong to let this suffering woman have her way with him. And he was going to put a stop to it. Just as soon as she finished teasing his nipples with her tongue. And nibbling on his chest.

  “What’s the matter, Alex? Have you forgiven me yet? I love you so much. Please take me home, baby.”

  Jack breathed her in. He knew it wasn’t right to take advantage of her closeness. But there was something he’d been thinking about doing since the moment he’d laid eyes on her in the bar last night, so he did it. He sank his fingers deep into her red curls, got a handful and buried his nose in them, inhaling her the scent of her hair and her scalp. This only spurred her on, as she worked her mouth across his chest and down toward his stomach.

  His better angel finally won out. Jack gritted his teeth and gently pushed her away. He picked up the water bottle again and poured some of it over her head.

  It was like she had awakened from an upsetting dream. She gasped for breath as the water entered her nose and mouth.

  “What the fuck?” she gasped. “What happened? What are we doing?”

  Jack spoke calmly and looked deeply into her eyes. “Maggie, focus. You passed out and you hurt yourself. I think you have heat exhaustion.”

  She looked down and horror crossed her face. “Where’s my shirt? Why am I half naked? Ow! Why do I hurt? What’s going on?”

  He brushed hair from her face. “Sweetheart, you passed out. I think you’re dehydrated. You fell and landed on the fork, you’ve got some deep cuts in your shoulder.”

  “Where the fuck is my shirt?”

  “Honey, I had to ruin your shirt. I used it to wrap up your wound. It’s not perfect, but I had to staunch the blood. I’m sorry. I acted before I thought about it.”

  The more she drank, the more she seemed to be clearheaded and rational.

  “As soon as you get some water in you, I’ll help you down the ladder and we’ll take you to urgent care.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You were injured on the job. I am taking you.”

  “And I’m telling you, I’m not going. I don’t have money to pay for a doctor visit. Now help me get out of here and back to the house so I can get dressed.”

  The two of them had a stare-down. He knew the fork had not pierced any major arteries, but his real concern was dehydration.

  “I am bringing you to a doctor even if I have to buckle you into my truck myself.”

  She looked at him, her eyes squinting slightly, her bottom lip jutting out as if she knew she’d lost the argument. What they had been arguing about almost went straight out of Jack’s head because all he wanted to do right then was suck on that bottom lip of hers and slip his fingers down under that lacy half-bra she was wearing.

  Any other day he might have felt like a pig having these thoughts about an injured woman. Today, for some reason, he felt alive and unashamed. Oh my word, he had it bad for Maggie.

  “Fine,” she relented.

  The word sounded—and felt—just like a wife giving in to a husband’s dumb-ass schemes. Not in an exhausted, get-out-of-my-face kind of “fine.” It was more like there was a little bit of playfulness behind all that deep, distant thunder.

  Still, he hoped—no, planned—to dig down to that part of her very soon that housed all that passion and danger. And he planned on it happening soon.

  Chapter 6

  Maggie

  Maggie came home from the doctor with a sling on her arm and some antibiotics. The urgent care doctor had prescribed rest and electrolytes. She had agreed, and she was so tired she didn’t even argue with Jack over the bill.

  She crashed hard in her bed and slept for hours. When she woke up that evening, she was immediately disappointed. She had had the craziest dream that she was a bad-ass witch princess, who was being rescued from the jaws of a fire-breathing dragon by a knight named Jack, who had come swashbuckling into the dragon’s seaside lair with a giant sword and a rope. In the dream, he’d swung down from a crevasse far above, dodged the dragon and held on to the rope as he effortlessly swept her out of her cave prison. She actually felt his arms around her waist, the heat radiating off his hands as he held her, his lips pressing against her head as he squeezed her tight so she would not fall. Maggie had been a witch princess, of course, so as they made their escape she doused the evil dragon with a magic tsunami that filled the lair with water.

  Maggie wanted to go back to sleep to finish the dream, to see where the two of them would end up. Pe
rhaps in a gilded tower with a tall, four-poster bed hung with gauzy curtains that he might use to tie back her wrists and…

  Whoa. Slow down, girl. No dream is that good. Also, it might not be the best idea to create fantasies about your boss.

  She sat up and winced. Her shoulder ached. It felt as though it was healing, not throbbing or warmth to the touch.

  As her head cleared and she drank from the water glass Jack had left for her on her side table, she realized why she’d been having such a hot dream. After she had passed out in the barn, she recalled him helping her down the ladder. He had insisted on going first and holding on to her to keep her steady, in case she felt woozy and fell. She remembered, despite being dehydrated and injured, feeling acutely aware that her ass was inches from Jack’s face the whole slow way down the ladder. His presence down there, coupled with his voice reminding her to take it easy, had caused a throb deep inside her.

  She looked down and saw that she was still shirtless, save for the skimpy bra which was now stale with sweat from that day’s work. Maggie popped off the bra and tossed it on the floor. She stretched and rubbed her aching skin under her breast.

  Man, that feels better.

  Her own apartment was becoming a necessity, if only to allow Maggie to walk around naked as she pleased. She would never, ever wear a bra again in her own place. She also noticed that her torn-up T-shirt had been replaced with a real Ace bandage, fashioned as a sling.

  “Well,” she said aloud to herself. “He is either a ninja or I was sleeping way hard.” She also thought he must be worried about the state of her shoulder muscles if he had forced her into a sling.

  Great, how was she supposed to work the farm? Would she get fired? Was he just going to let her hang around until her shoulder healed up and then gently let her go? She imagined what he would say. “Sorry, darlin’, but I need someone with a strong back, and you may be good with animals, but frankly you’re a lightweight.”