by Sandra Hill
“Hey, it’s not necessary to yell at our sister,” Roy yelled. He, Hank, Jerry Lee and Johnny were coming up behind Annie, to form a protective flank. Chet had taken Jason out of the manger and was holding him to his shoulder, as if Mr. Jessup might do the infant bodily harm.
“Furthermore, those animals better not have done any damage,” Mr. Jessup continued and proceeded to walk toward the shed where Wayne was hee-hawing and the sheep were bleating, as if sensing some disaster in progress.
“No! Don’t!” they all shouted in warning.
Too late.
Mr. Jessup slipped on a pile of sheep dung. Righting himself, he noticed Wayne’s back leg shoot out. To avoid the kick, he spun on his ankle. Annie could almost hear the tendons tearing as his ankle twisted. His expensive shoes, now soiled, went out from under him, and the man went down hard, on his back, with his head hitting a small rock with an ominous crack.
“I’m going to sue your eyelashes off,” Mr. Jessup said on a moan, just before he passed out.
Chapter Two
A boy like me, a girl like you . . . uh-oh!
He was drunk . . . as a skunk.
Well, not actually drunk. More like under the influence of pain killers. But the effect was the same. Three sheets to a Memphis wind.
“Oh, I wish I was not in the land of Dixie,” Mr. Jessup belted out. He’d been singing nonstop for the past five minutes.
Annie and the cute emergency room intern exchanged a look.
Annie tried to get him to lie down on the table. “Mr. Jessup, you really should settle—”
“Call me Clay.” He flashed her a lopsided grin, accompanied by the most amazing, utterly adorable dimples. Then he resumed his rendition of Dixie with a stanza ending, “ . . . strange folks there are not forgotten.”
Geez!
“I wish I’d bought that tee shirt I saw at the airport.” Mr. Jessup . . . rather, Clay . . . stopped singing for a moment to inject that seemingly irrelevant thought. “Its logo said, `Elvis Is Dead, And I’m Not Feelin’ So Good Myself.’ Ha, ha, ha!”
“He’s having a rather . . . um, strange allergic reaction. Or perhaps I just gave him a little too much medication,” the young doctor mumbled, casting a sheepish glance toward the other busy cubicles to see if any of his colleagues had overheard.
“No kidding, Doctor McDreamy!” Annie remarked. Clay was now leading an orchestra in his own version of “Flight of the Bumble Bee.” She didn’t think Rimsky-Korsakov had actual bzzz-ing sounds in his original opera containing that music.
“You have big hair,” he observed to Annie then, cocking his head this way and that to get just the right angle in studying its huge contours. “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Does your boyfriend like it?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
He nodded his head, as if that was a given. “A man couldn’t get close enough to kiss you. Or other things,” he noted, jiggling his eyebrows at her.
The man was going to hate himself tomorrow if he remembered any of this.
Annie already hated herself . . . because, for some reason, the word “kiss” coming from his lips Who knew they would be so full and sensual when not pressed together into a thin line of disapproval? prompted all kinds of erotic images to flicker in her underused libido. She pressed a palm to her forehead. “Boy, is it hot in here!”
“I’ll second that. I’m burning up.” Clay twisted his head from side to side, massaging the nape of his neck with one hand. Then, before she could protest, he loosened the string tie at the back of his shoulders and let his hospital gown slide to the floor. He wore nothing but a pair of boring white boxer shorts.
Boring, hell! He is sexy as sin.
Annie’s mouth gaped open and her temperature shot up another notch or two at all that skin. And muscle. And dark silky hair.
Funny how hair on Frankie Wilks seemed repulsive. But with this man, she had to practically hold her hand back for fear she’d run her fingertips through his chest hairs. Or forearm hairs. Or . . . Lordy, Lordy . . . thigh hairs.
How could a man so stodgy and mean be so primitively attractive? She’d gotten to know just how stodgy and mean he could be on the ride over here. And how did a man who presumably worked at a desk all day long maintain such a flat, muscle-planed stomach?
Startled, she clicked her jaw shut.
“It’s not warm in here,” the doctor pointed out, intruding into her thoughts. Thank God! “Perhaps you both have a fever. But no, I checked your temperature, Mr. Jessup. It’s normal.”
Normal? There’s nothing normal about the steam heat rising in this room.
Clay glared at Annie accusingly. Was he going to blame her for a fever, too? To her horror, he broke out with the husky, intimate lyrics, “You give me fever.” He was staring at her the whole time.
Oh, mercy! Who would have thought he even knew an Elvis lyric? It had probably seeped into his unconscious over the years through some sort of Muzak osmosis.
“The medication will wear off in a couple of hours,” the doctor was saying. “After that, we’ll switch to Tylenol with Codeine. Considering his reaction, I would suggest you give him only half a tablet.”
“Me? Me?” Hey, I’ve got to get back to the Nativity scene. Without my supervision, who knows what my brothers are doing? Probably a hip hop version of “Away In a Manger.” Not that my brothers know what hip hop is, aside from music videos . I wouldn’t put it past Roy and Hank to be flirting with passersby, too.
The doctor finished wrapping Clay’s sprained ankle tightly and took on what he’d probably practiced in front of a mirror as a serious medical demeanor. “The goose egg on the back of your head is just a hard knock, but you should be watched closely for the next twenty-four hours. I don’t like the way you reacted to Darvon. Do you have family nearby to keep an eye on you?”
“I have no family,” Clay declared woefully.
He’s not married. Annie did a mental high five, though why she couldn’t imagine. Her heart would have gone out to the man at that poignant comment if it weren’t for the fact he was back to glowering at her. She tried to understand why he directed all his hostility toward her. No doubt it stemmed from the fact that he’d been really angry about the accident and blamed it all on her family. “You and your crazy brothers are going to pay,” he’d informed her repeatedly on the drive to the hospital, during the long wait in the emergency room, throughout the examination, right up until the pain killers had performed their miraculous transformation. Good thing she’d talked her brothers into manning the Nativity scene, minus a Blessed Virgin, till she returned. They would have belted Clay for his surliness!
She was hoping he’d meant the threat figuratively. She was hoping it had only been the pain speaking. She was hoping God listened to the prayers of Blessed Mother impersonators.
They couldn’t afford a new barn roof and a law suit.
“Well, then, perhaps we should admit you,” the doctor told him. “At least overnight . . . for observation.”
“I’m going back to my hotel room,” Clay argued, shimmying forward to get off the examining table and stand. In the process, his boxers rode high, giving Annie an eyeful, from the side, of a tight buttock.
And her temperature cranked up another notch.
Who knew! Who could have guessed?
Ouch,” he groaned as his feet hit the floor. He staggered woozily and braced himself against the wall.
“You could stay at the farm with us for a few days,” Annie surprised herself by offering. The fever that had overcome her on first viewing this infuriating tyrant must have gone to her brain. “Aunt Liza can help care for you . . .” while we’re in the city doing our Nativity scene. “It’ll be more comfortable than a hotel room . . .” and you wouldn’t see us on your property.
“That’s a good idea,” the doctor offered, obviously anxious to end this case and move on to the next cubicle.
“Okie dokie,” Clay slurr
ed out, the time-release medication apparently kicking in again. He was leaning against the wall, bemusedly rubbing his fingertips across his lips, as if they felt numb. Then he idly scratched his stomach . . . his flat stomach . . . in an utterly male gesture his lordliness probably never indulged in back at the manor house.
Her heart practically stopped as the significance of his quick agreement sunk in. Criminey! I’m bringing Donald Trump home with me. What possessed me to make such an offer? My brothers will kill me. But, no. It really is a good idea. Get him on home turf where we can talk down his anger. Perhaps convince him to let us continue our Nativity scene the rest of the week. Take advantage of his weakened state. Heck, we might even persuade him to change his plans about razing the hotel.
On the other hand, Elvis might be alive and living in the refrigerator at Pizza Hut.
“A farm? I’ve never been on a real farm before.” A grin tugged at his frowning lips and he winked at her. “Eeii, eeii, oh, Daisy Mae.”
Holy Cow! The grin, combined with the sexy wink, kicked up the heat in her already feverish body another notch. Even worse, the man must have a sense of humor buried under all that starch. It just wasn’t fair. Annie didn’t stand a chance.
“Uh-oh.” His brow creased with sudden worry. “Do you have outhouses? I don’t think I want to live on a farm if I have to use an outhouse.”
Live? Who said anything about “live?” We’re talking visit here. A day . . . two at the most. But Annie couldn’t help but smile at his silly concern.
“Hey, you’re not so bad looking when you smile.” Clay cocked his head to one side, studying her.
“Thanks a bunch, your smoothness,” she retorted. “And, no, we don’t have outhouses.”
“Do you have cows and horses and chickens and stuff?” he asked with a boyish enthusiasm he probably hadn’t exhibited in twenty-five years . . . if ever.
“Yep. Even a goat.”
“Oh, boy!” he said.
As the implications of her impetuous offer hit Annie . . . Mr. GQ Wall Street on their humble farm . . . she echoed his sentiment, Oh, boy!
“Did you ever make love in a hayloft?” he asked bluntly.
“No!” She lifted her chin indignantly, appalled that he would even ask her such an intimate question. Despite her indignation, though, unwelcome images flickered into Annie’s brain, and her fever flared into a full-blown inferno.
“Neither have I,” Clay noted, as he stared her straight in the eye and let loose with the slowest, sexiest grin she’d seen since Elvis died.
Who knew Scrooge could be so hot! . . .
At the sign, “Sweet Hollow Farm,” Annie swerved the pickup truck off the highway and onto the washboard-rough dirt lane that meandered for a quarter mile up to the house.
Tears filled her eyes on viewing her property, as they often did when she’d been away, even if only for a few hours. She loved this land . . . the smell of its rich soil, the feel of the breeze coming off the Mississippi River, the taste of its wholesome bounty. It had been a real struggle these past ten years, but she prided herself on not having sold off even one parcel from the 120-acre family legacy.
“Oh, darn!” she muttered when she hit one of the many potholes. The eight-year-old vehicle, with its virtually nonexistent springs, went up in the air and down hard.
She worriedly contemplated her sleeping passenger who groaned, then rubbed the back of his aching head. His eyelids drifted open slowly, and Annie could see the disorientation hazing their deep blue depths. As his brain slowly cleared, he sat straighter and glanced to the pasture on the right where sixty milk cows, bearing the traditional black and white markings of the Holstein breed, grazed contentedly, along with an equal number of heifers and a half dozen new calves.
“Holy hell!” Clay muttered. “Cows!”
Geez! You’d think they didn’t have dairy herds in New Jersey.
Slowly, his head turned forward, taking in the clapboard farmhouse up ahead, which must be a stark contrast to his own Princeton home. She knew she was correct in her assessment when he murmured, “The Waltons! I’ve landed in John Boy Central.”
His slow survey continued, now to the left, where he flinched visibly on seeing her . . . still adorned in all her Priscilla/Madonna garishness.
His forehead furrowing with confusion, he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt. Then, his fingers fluttered in an unconscious sweep down his body, hesitating for the briefest second over his groin.
Annie understood his bewilderment, even if he didn’t. For some reason, an odd heat—of an erotic nature, not the body temperature type—was generated when they were in each other’s presence. She empathized with his consternation. Clayton Jessup, III was a gorgeous hunk . . . when he wasn’t frowning, that is. He would find it unbelievable that he could be attracted to a tasteless caricature of the Virgin Mary.
“Can you turn down the heat?” he asked testily.
“There is no heat. The thermostat broke last winter.”
“Humph!” he commented as he rolled down the window on his side. “Pee-yew!” He immediately rolled it back up. “How can you stand that smell?”
“What smell? Oh, you mean the cows.” She shrugged. “You get used to it after a while. Actually, I like the scent. It spells good country living to me.”
“Humph! It spells cow crap to me.”
Clay’s condescending attitude was starting to irk Annie. She had liked him a whole lot better when he was under the influence.
“Am I being kidnapped?” he inquired hesitantly.
“Wha-at?” Where did that insane idea come from? Oh, I see. His gaze riveted now behind his head where Chet’s hunting rifle rested in the gun rack above the bench seat. “Of course not.”
“Where am I?”
“Don’t you remember? You fell outside the hotel. I took you to the hospital emergency room. Oh, don’t look so alarmed. You just have a sprained ankle and a goose egg on your head. The doctor said you need special care for a day or two because of the reaction you had to the Darvon, and I offered to bring you out to the farm. We’re about a half hour outside Memphis.”
“I agreed to stay on a . . . farm?” His eyes, which were really quite beautiful—a deep blue framed by thick black lashes—went wide with disbelief.
“Yes,” she said in a voice stiff with affront.
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
Yep, his superiority complex was annoying the heck out of her. “Maybe because you were under the influence of drugs.”
“I don’t take drugs.”
“You did today, buddy.”
“Take me back to the hotel.”
She let loose with a long sigh. “We’ve already been through this before. You need special care. Since you have no family, I volunteered . . . out of the goodness of my heart, I might add . . . and do I get any thanks? No, sirree.”
“Who said I have no family?”
“You did?”
“I . . . did . . . not!” His face flushed with embarrassment.
Geez, why would he be uncomfortable over revealing that he had no family? It only made him appear human. Hah! Maybe that was the key. He didn’t want to be human.
“I don’t discuss my personal life with . . . strangers.”
Bingo! “Well, you did this time.”
His eyelids fluttered with sleepiness even as he spoke. “What elsh did I saaaay?”
The little demons on the wrong side of Annie’s brain did a victory dance at Clay’s question. Here was the perfect opportunity for her to get even for his patronizing comments.
“Well, you did a lot of singing.”
His eyes shot open. “Me? In public?”
“Hmmm. Do you consider the emergency room a public place?”
“That’s impossible.”
“And, of course, there was your remark about haylofts . . .”
“Huh?”
Annie could see the poor guy was fighting sleep. Still, she co
uldn’t help herself from adding, “ . . . and making love.”
“Making love in a hayloft? I said that?” Clay murmured skeptically. “With you? Humph! I couldn’t have been that much out of my mind.”
Before she could correct his misconception that he’d associated making love in a hayloft with her, his head fell back. Good thing, too, because Annie was about to give him a matching goose egg on the other side of his insulting noggin. “Did you say humbug?”
“No! Why does everyone think I’m a Scrooge?” he asked drowsily, followed by a lusty yawn.
