Chapter 11
Iassured myself that Jared hadn’t been gone long enough to have had one last round of sex with this Sorcha person. It was a two-hour round trip to Inverness, and he was back in two hours thirty.
Thirty minutes was so long enough for a quickie. Damn, a minute was long enough for a quickie.
He wouldn’t have done that, though. He’d promised me monogamy for two months so we could sell the lie.
I was desperate to ask about her, and I couldn’t ignore the ache of jealousy I experienced over this woman who Jared McCulloch had wanted long enough to be with for six months.
When he returned, he was brooding, which worried me. Did he have real feelings for Sorcha? Had I fucked up something important for him by offering him a chance to save his farm? Had I inadvertently forced him to choose between the farm and Sorcha? Instead of sticking around to talk like he’d suggested, he changed back into his work clothes and went out to find Georgie.
He didn’t come home for the dinner I’d made. It was nothing special. I’d just boiled some pasta and made a sauce. I’d also burnt the garlic bread in his oven because I wasn’t used to it yet.
When it hit nine o’clock and he still hadn’t returned, I knew he was avoiding me. Sarah had told me a while ago that Jared kept early hours as much as he could. Early to bed, early to rise.
Not wanting to sit there like a little wife waiting on her husband to come home, I’d covered his plate with foil and left a note for him that the food was there if he wanted to heat it up. Retiring to my room that still didn’t feel like mine, I’d set my alarm for four thirty because I was determined to discuss important things with Jared. He would not avoid me tomorrow.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, thankfully, emotionally exhausted, I fell asleep. But my last thoughts before I drifted off were about my fake husband and where he was tonight and if he intended to sleep in his own bed like he’d promised.
Walking into the kitchen early the next morning, I found Jared braced against the counter, sipping from a mug of coffee. Light streamed in through the kitchen window. During summer here, the days were long; it started to get dark around eleven at night and light just after three in the morning. I slept with a sleep mask.
It was five o’clock and the sun was already shining, casting a halo around the back of Jared’s head. Until I moved farther into the room, I couldn’t read his expression.
His eyebrows rose at the sight of me. “You’re up early.”
“We have a lot to discuss today … so I thought you could give me a tour of the farm while we talk. You can tell me about your plans, and I can help make them happen.”
He appeared surprised. “You want to tour the farm?”
“Of course.”
“Won’t you be bored?”
I puckered my brow. “What do you think I do all day, Jared? Spend my daddy’s cash and laze around?”
He frowned at the bite in my tone. “Of course not.”
“Good. I might have a trust fund, but I also have my own money. I’m a successful artist and I get my inspiration from nature. I love walking and hiking and all the things. So … show me around.”
“Okay.” He nodded agreeably. “You want a coffee?”
I moved to the cupboard beside him, ignoring the way my skin prickled as my arm brushed his. “Yesterday, I bought some of this heather tea I’ve fallen in love with since moving here.”
“You don’t drink coffee?”
“Not anymore.”
I glanced into his mug as I passed him to boil the kettle for my tea. “You’re a black coffee guy?”
“Aye.”
“Good to know.”
He cleared his throat as he turned to me. “I … uh … I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t realize you were making me dinner.”
“It’s fine,” I said, more blasé than I felt. “Did you manage to heat it up?”
“I’d already eaten. Georgie and I went to the Gloaming for dinner and a few pints.”
Irritation pestered at me and I couldn’t look at him as I poured the hot water into my mug. “It’s not really a great look … you disappearing all evening the night after you’re married. People expect newlyweds to be all over each other.”
At his silence, I gathered the courage to look at him.
Jared scowled, then bit out a curse as he rubbed a hand over his beard. “You’re right. I didn’t think.”
And I didn’t want to think about the fact that after dumping his casual girlfriend, he hadn’t wanted to spend the evening with me. “It’s fine. I’m …you know … I’m sorry if I’m cramping your style here.” I gestured around me, indicating the house. “I could stick to my room if that helps.”
“No.” He grimaced. “Fuck, Allegra, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable here. Yesterday was just … it was a lot. I’m not a man who lies to people. In fact, I’m known for being brutally honest. So … it fucked me up a bit and I just needed … I don’t know.”
“I get it,” I promised. “Believe me, I get it.”
He seemed to accept that and relaxed. “I did have a thought yesterday.”
“Oh?” I sipped at my tea, trying not to stare too hard at his handsome face.
“We don’t have any photos together. No selfies. Nothing.”
Damn. I hadn’t thought about that. “Well, if it comes up, we can just say we were keeping our relationship quiet so we deliberately didn’t take any. Now that we’re married, maybe we should try to take at least one a day. Just so we have them. We could take a selfie while we’re out on the farm today.”
“All right.” He nodded gruffly and glanced down at my feet. “Do you have wellies?”
“I have hiking boots.”
“Those will do. Breakfast first.” He pulled open the refrigerator and removed eggs. “Eggs on toast work for you?”
“You’re cooking me breakfast?” The thought caused a little kernel of warmth in my chest.
Jared shot me a too-sexy smirk. “I’m cooking myself breakfast like I have done for years. It’s only polite to ask if you’d like some too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’d like eggs on toast too.”
“Sunny side up or over easy?”
“Over easy, please.”
He smiled at the pan as he placed a knob of butter in it. “Guess we can tell people we have one thing in common—we like our eggs the same way.”
I grinned as I pulled the bread out of the larder to make the toast. “Imagine that.”
Jared would never be a big conversationalist. I got the impression he was more of a listener. But at least at breakfast he wasn’t as coolly distant with me as he had been. I peppered him with questions about the farm before we departed, and he told me how many acres he had across eight fields. Each field had a name and a purpose.
Our first stop was the henhouse, right behind the farmhouse. I’d heard the hens clucking around and, of course, the rooster, nature’s own alarm clock. Jared explained he had one rooster to twelve hens.
After we’d eaten and cleaned away our dishes (Jared was very tidy, which I’d already guessed from the state of the farmhouse), he’d pulled a bag of what he called layer pellets out of a large cupboard in the mudroom. While he handed me the bag along with a bag of mixed corn, he grabbed a bucket and filled it with water from an outside tap.
“The chickens need food and water daily, but the food has to be removed at night to discourage pests. Their bedding needs changed once a week, and the henhouse requires disinfection every four months,” he told me as we strolled over to it.
The house was twice as big as any I’d seen, as was the attached chicken run. At the sight of Jared, the chickens came running toward him, squawking eagerly.
I smiled at their excitement and studied what Jared was doing as he poured water into a trough-like dish the chickens could access from inside the run. Next to it was an even longer trough.
He reached for the pellets and corn, but I kept my grip on them and walked over to the trough. “Do I just pour them both in, like a mix?”
At his silence, I squinted back against the early-morning sun. I’d need to return to the house for my sunglasses before we left to explore the rest of the farm.
“Well?”
Jared frowned but nodded. “Aye, just pour it in.”
“Until the bags are empty?”
“Aye.”
I nodded and poured it all in, laughing at the way the chickens ran at it, pecking at the pellets and corn before I’d even finished. “Hungry, huh? Is that yummy? Mmm, it sure looks yummy.” I murmured some compliments to the ladies as the laid-back rooster suddenly squeezed in between them. “Oh, here he is. The man of the hour. This is the life, huh? All these ladies to yourself.”
The rooster cocked his head at me as if to say, “Well, yeah” and I giggled, turning to Jared.
The soft expression on his face made my smile falter.
He’d never looked at me like that before.
As if realizing it himself, he strolled abruptly past and opened a box next to the henhouse. Inside were egg cartons. Weirdly excited about fresh eggs, I hurried to his side and watched as he opened a part of the home that housed the chickens.
He revealed beds of wood shavings inside, and they were dotted with fresh eggs.
“Oh my God.” I clapped my hands together. “Freaking eggs!”
Jared chuckled as he glanced at me before carefully collecting them. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen an egg before, but we just ate them, remember.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never seen them fresh from the source.” I peered into the carton as Jared filled two. A dozen eggs. “Do they lay this many every day?”
“Almost every day. I keep some for myself and I sell the rest to Morag who runs the grocery store and deli. When Sarah lived here, she looked after the chickens and dropped the eggs off with Morag every morning before her shift at Ardnoch. Now I do it.”
“I could do this,” I told him as we walked back to the house.
“Do what?”
“I could feed and water the chickens. Look after them. It would take one more chore off your plate.”
Jared shook his head. “You’d need to be up at this time every morning to do it so I could run them to Morag’s in time.”
“I could do that too. Take them to Morag’s. I know Morag, you know. I’ve practically been living here for four years.”
“It’s fine, Hollywood. I don’t expect you to help out on the farm.”
Hollywood? I scowled at the nickname. “I think it would sell our story better if I did help in some way. I’m not lazy. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing, and early mornings don’t bother me. I don’t sleep a lot, anyway.” It was true. When inspiration struck me, I’d often forget to sleep while I worked on a project.
“I didn’t say you were lazy, just that you don’t need to help out. You’re not used to this kind of life, Allegra.”
What did that mean? “Well, I think it would look good if I was the one to take the eggs to Morag,” I insisted stubbornly.
Jared stepped into the mudroom, holding the door open for me. I held his gaze, wondering what thoughts were hiding behind his. “You want to look after the chickens?”
“Yes. I am capable of looking after another living creature.”
“I never said you weren’t. Are you always this defensive?”
Irritation flushed through me. “When I feel like I’m being judged, yeah.”
With an aggravated sigh of his own, Jared grabbed his car keys off the hook by the door. “I’m not judging you. You’ve just never experienced work like this. On a farm. It’s constant and tiring and as far from the world you’re used to as it gets. Farm life isn’t glamorous. It’s not art and art shows and galleries and all that champagne stuff. I just don’t want you feeling pressured into changing your life any more than this scheme already has.”
Thinking of his night at the pub last night, I wondered if he didn’t want me feeling pressured or if he didn’t want to feel pressured? And I was getting kind of tired of him making assumptions about me based on what he thought he knew about me. Was this why I was so unattractive to him? Because he thought I was a spoiled, Hollywood princess who la-la-la-ed her way through life with art and art shows and galleries and champagne stuff.
I stepped into Jared’s path as he moved back toward the door. “I know we don’t know each other very well, Jared, but I’m going to tell you a few things that might stop you second-guessing me in the future.” I leaned into him a little, his cologne tickling my senses. “One: I never do anything I don’t want to do. Two: I’m not some Hollywood princess whose been protected in bubble wrap her whole life. I’ve almost died, I’ve shot someone, and I’ve been to rehab. And that all happened before I was eighteen years old.”
His nostrils flared in surprise at my confession.
“Life is hard, Jared. And painful. Not even money can protect you from that. I’m not who you think I am, and I’d like it, if going forward, you could just treat me … as a person and not as Chiara and Wesley Howard’s daughter.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of those last words, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
For the first time since we met, Jared looked at me. Really looked at me. Those spectacular eyes roamed my face as if he hadn’t seen me until just then. My heart rate escalated as the silence between us stretched.
“Okay,” he said on a heavy exhale.
I deflated with something like disappointment, but I wasn’t sure why. What had I expected Mr. Monosyllabic to say?
“Okay.” I nodded and turned on my heels. “Let’s go sell some eggs.”