Chapter 2 #2
Bernie nodded. “They don’t need us here. Come on.” She turned and started the long walk back across the field. “The panels are behind the barn. They’ll need to be disassembled and loaded onto a trailer. I can hook the trailer up to the tractor to pull it out here.”
Gerard kept pace with her. “I’ll let the guys know to head this way.” He pulled out his cell phone, keyed in a text and pressed Send . A moment later, his phone pinged with a response. He glanced up. “They’re on their way.”
As they arrived at the barn, the Louisiana State crime scene team pulled into the yard at the same time as the truck loaded with her field workers.
Bernie pointed the crime scene team in the right direction and watched as they picked their way across the field.
Then she turned to the man in charge of the workers and shook her head.
“We won’t be able to harvest today. I don’t suppose you have room on your schedule to come back in two or three days? ”
The weathered man shook his head and spoke with his heavy Hispanic accent, “I’m sorry, Ms. Bellamy. We were only scheduled to work this afternoon and tomorrow morning. We have to move on to the next job. It’ll be a couple of weeks before we can get back here.”
Bernie nodded. “I understand.”
The men loaded into the truck and drove away.
Gerard stepped up beside her and touched her arm briefly. “It’s okay. My team will see that your crop is harvested on time.”
“Thanks,” she said, at once grateful and frustrated that she had to rely on others to help her.
She’d managed the last three years on her own and the two-and-a-half years before that when she’d taken care of Ray and the farm by herself.
When she’d needed help, she’d contracted labor, refusing to be beholden to anyone.
“I can only afford to pay them what I would’ve paid the crew that just left. ”
“They won’t take your money. I think they’ll actually look forward to working outside.”
She pressed her lips together. “The melons are heavy, and the humidity makes it feel hotter than the air temperature.”
“We’ve been working in the old boat factory, demolishing old, heavy equipment and then cleaning junk accumulated for decades. The place is big but not airconditioned.” He glanced around. “It might be hot outside, but at least we have a chance at a breeze and sunshine on our faces.”
Minutes later, a couple of trucks and an SUV pulled into the front yard and parked in a row. Several men dropped down from the vehicles and approached Bernie and Gerard. All were tall and muscular, but none quite as tall or broad-shouldered as Gerard.
A man with dark brown hair, reddish-brown eyes and a richly tanned complexion clapped a hand on Gerard’s back. “First assignment, and you’re already calling for reinforcements?”
Gerard glared at the man. “I just need you all for a few lousy minutes to help set up a temporary corral that’ll hold some pigs.”
“What do you need us to do?” A man with brown-black hair, smoky gray eyes and a sexy five-o’clock shadow turned on a smoldering hot smile and aimed it at Bernie.
That smile probably made other women weak at the knees. Bernie was startled at the faint flutter of awareness disturbing her gut.
She had to tell herself that the man had a great smile but was almost too handsome. And he probably knew it.
Bernie dragged her gaze away from the devastatingly handsome man and focused on Gerard.
Her assigned protector was a man whose face wore a scowl more often than a smile and who looked like he could rip a man’s head off with his teeth.
Well over six feet tall, his larger-than-life presence didn’t intimidate her as she was sure he would other women.
Instead, he was a calming influence that kept her grounded at the same time he kept her knotted inside.
When he’d touched her arm, she’d felt a shock of awareness. It had passed through her body like a lightning bolt, warming places that had been cold for too long, igniting a flame beneath her long-doused desire, making her want something more than the life she’d been living for the past three years.
As soon as the thought filled her brain, she realized how foolish it was to think a man like Gerard would be at all interested in a widow who spent ninety-nine percent of her time growing things and taking care of animals.
She had little time for herself, much less anyone else.
To pay her bills and keep food on the table, she had to work.
Besides, he’d only touched her arm out of a friendly concern. And surely it had been a fluke. A bodily reaction stemming from the stress of finding a foot on her property. What were the chances she’d have the same reaction if he touched her again?
Gerard leaned close and touched her arm again. “Bernie, are you all right?” His breath stirred the loose tendrils of hair around her ear, making her shiver with awareness.
When she didn’t respond immediately, his hand found the small of her back.
Lightning ripped through her senses, blasting heat throughout her body, coiling tightly around her core.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice breathy, not at all her usual firm, confident tone.
“I’m just a little off balance by everything that’s happened.
” She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and shot a glance around at the men gathered around her in a semi-circle.
“Follow me, and we can get started dismantling and loading the panels.”
She led the men to the back side of the barn where the portable panels were standing where they’d been for the past four or five years.
Weeds grew around them. What once had been a dirt lunging pen for horses was now filled with waist-high grass she hadn’t bothered to mow because other chores took priority, like feeding animals, planting, tilling and harvesting crops.
Bernie waved a hand toward the panels. “There’s a toolbox in the tack room. You’ll need something to help you loosen the clamps holding the panels together. I’ll bring the tractor and trailer around for you to stack the panels on.” Bernie spun on her heels and headed into the barn.
Gerard followed, his mere presence keeping her pulse racing erratically. She couldn’t function this way. She needed distance between herself and Gerard.
Bernie stopped. “You don’t have to help me. I can do this myself. I’ve hooked up utility trailers to the tractor and my trucks for years. I can almost do it with my eyes closed.” Okay, that was stretching the truth a bit. She just didn’t want him to dog her every footstep or touch her again.
He was little more than a stranger, and she shouldn’t be feeling anything but gratitude for his kindness.
They had bigger problems than her non-existent sex life. She had a crop to harvest and a mystery to solve.
She didn’t have time to moon over a giant of a man who made her feel again.
He needed to go away and let her get her head on straight. She didn’t need a protector. The sheriff’s department and state crime lab would be enough to solve this case.
She wasn’t even sure who or what she was supposed to be kept safe from.
So, they’d found a foot in the pigpen. That didn’t automatically equate to danger to herself or her animals. She had a rifle, a shotgun and a handgun, and she wasn’t afraid to use them.
As soon as the state crime lab team left, she’d send Gerard on his way and get her life back on its normal track.
Usually an optimist, the series of events Bernie had endured over the past five or six years had left her cautious and determined to be independent.
She never wanted to depend on a man for physical contact or emotional support.
It had hurt too much when she’d lost Ray.
Bernie wasn’t sure she would survive another such loss.
In her mind, it was settled. Once they had the pigs moved into the temporary corral, Gerard could leave. Then Bernie could get back to her life and quit having those flashes of heat stealing through her every time he touched her. In time, she might stop craving those touches.