Chapter 2 Pane #2
I get out and come around to the front of the vehicle, where the woman attempts to shoo the pigs across the road.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
She tosses out her arms. “Throwing a block party! What does it look like? I’m trying to get them across. No thanks to you and your reckless driving.”
Excuse me? “I was going the speed limit.”
“Sure you were. If the speed limit was a thousand miles per hour.”
This is the gratitude I get for not flattening her into a pancake? “Get your swine out of here.”
Her cheeks, pink with frustration, puff out. “Why don’t you get your SUV out of here?”
“Because I’m legally allowed to be here.”
“Well, so am I,” she sasses, hand on her hip.
She points off somewhere in the distance, but my eyes don’t follow. In my world, one snap of my fingers and people fall in line. This woman isn’t falling into anything, and my brain can’t seem to wrap itself around the fact that she isn’t thanking me for not killing her.
Who is this woman, with pink lips that form a perfect bow and dark hair that’s woven into a messy braid? She’s got this whole girl-next-door vibe—prim and proper, easy and carefree. Sassy in the bedroom.
A primal urge erupts throughout my body. The desire to wrap my fingers through her hair and claim this woman nearly knocks me over.
“The sign,” she grinds out.
“I’m, um . . .” My brain’s fogged up. Can’t think. Can’t form words. This experience is so out of my norm that frustration gushes through my bloodstream, which actually helps my focus return. “The sign . . . ?”
She jabs the air. “The one right there.”
I tear my gaze from her warm brown eyes to the yellow road sign stamped with the black silhouettes of two horned animals—a pig and a unicorn—with the word Xing printed at the bottom.
A long exhale helps finish the job of getting my head screwed on straight. “Sorry,” I growl. “I didn’t see the sign because I was too busy trying not to kill you and your mutant swine.”
Her jaw drops and she sucks in air, her expression one of sheer disbelief that I would dare insult the small creatures she’s Little Bo Peep–ing across the road.
“Piggycorns,” she corrects, clearly flustered. “They are called piggycorns.”
Our gazes lock, and one side of my mouth ticks up into a smirk. “Mutant. Swine.”
She bristles, her hackles lifting like the delicate pink mohawks striping down the swines’ bodies. “They are not mutants. For your information, piggycorns are a rare breed of pig that just so happen to have a horn.”
I sense a sore spot. “Someone being mean to your piggies, Sunbeam?”
“What did you call me?”
“I called you Sunbeam.”
“Why?”
“Obviously because of your radiantly sweet personality,” I reply sarcastically. “Do your swine grant wishes?”
“No,” she grudgingly admits. “But they are adorable, and plenty of people love having them as pets.”
“What do they do? Retrieve your phone?”
“Very funny.” She folds her arms and juts out her hip. “They do not bring you objects. They do other things.”
“Like?”
“Like . . .”
She clears her throat, her cheeks red from embarrassment as she desperately tries to come up with some sort of fantastic answer. It’s cute, her floundering.
Shut up, Pane. She is not cute.
“I’ll tell you what they do,” she finally says.
“Please. I’m on the edge of my seat.”
She shoots me a quick look, acknowledging my sarcasm and frowning. “Piggycorns snuggle with you, cuddle, and lick your feet.”
“And this is supposed to sell me on them?”
She throws her hands in the air. “Would you just help me get them across?”
“As you wish.”
She pushes one swine gently, walking away, giving me a great view of her ass, which leaves me spellbound.
It must be the pollen in the air that’s causing me not to think straight.
I’m supposed to be on my way to securing my family’s company, but here I am, being enchanted by a pig herder. Herdess? Is that a word?
Definitely not a word.
She turns back to me, her braid whipping over her shoulder. “Well? Are you just going to stand there? The sooner we get them across the road, the sooner you can get going.”
“Right. And you move them, how? By pulling on their horn?”
I reach for one, and she slaps my hand away. “No, that’s a terrible idea. Are you trying to hurt them? They can’t lose their horns.”
“But the horns don’t do anything. Are they even real?”
“Of course they’re real.” Sunbeam scoffs while rolling her eyes dramatically. “Oh, I get it. You’re one of those people who don’t believe in the unicorns.”
“Why should I?”
“I have no interest or time to debate the magic of unicorns with a man in a three-piece suit.” Her gaze slides up and down my body. “Besides, I don’t care what you believe. Just help me. Shoo them. Like this.”
She taps one on the haunches, but the creature shows absolutely no interest in doing anything except sniffing the dead dragonflies on the SUV’s grille.
Oh, wait. One of the bugs moved its head. It’s not actually dead, just stuck.
I pull it free and release it into the air as she snaps her fingers. “You know, it would be great if you’d help. It’s the least you can do for almost killing us.”
Oh, now she’s asking for it. “For your information, you were standing in the middle of the road right after I rounded a curve. If I had hit you—and I didn’t—it wouldn’t have been my fault because your pigs weren’t moving then and they’re not moving now.”
She nudges another one, who holds its ground surprisingly well for a creature no larger than a small dog. “They just need a little encouragement. Listen, whether this gets done today or tomorrow, it’s got to get done.”
My brain misfires as if I’ve heard the sound of a record scratching.
Every cell in my body hardens into a wall of steel. “What did you say?”
She shrugs. “Whether it gets done today or tomorrow—”
“I heard you.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Don’t say that again. Never say that.”
She shakes her head at the piggycorns, who are now plopped in the middle of the road like it’s break time. “You don’t get to tell me what to say. You don’t own the world.”
Hmm. Maybe not the whole thing, but a decent chunk of it.
Then, on top of that, she sasses back, “I’ll say whatever I want.”
“Fine. Just don’t use that phrase.”
She scoffs. “Hurry up, and I won’t have to.”
I glare at her, but she just tosses her farm-girl braid over one shoulder and turns her attention to the piggycorns. “Who’s a sweet little piggy? You are!”
I am officially in hell.
When I bend over to shoo the animals is the moment my allergies decide to flare up. After several violent sneezes, when I finally stop, I have an audience of piggycorns staring up at me, pink snouts lifted in the air, eyes glittering with curiosity.
And the moment I stop is when they up the ante, no longer content with simply fixing their attention on me.
One rubs against my leg, wiping what I hope is mud on my suit pants.
I push it away, but several others circle like Komodo dragons going in for the kill.
Either that, or the pig that rubbed against me wiped its scent on my pants, signaling to the others that I’m now one of them, ready to be smeared with war paint.
That must be the case, because before I know it, they’re tangled in my legs.
“Tallulah, stop,” Sunbeam says. “Y’all get off him.”
The swine are literally swarming. I can’t move without crushing them. One lifts up on its hind legs and places its front hooves on me, pushing me into another who’s behind my calves.
I lose my balance and drop onto the road. Next thing I know, small pigs are crawling over me, sniffing my arms, foraging under my knees. What the hell?
“Get off him,” she commands, more annoyed than worried.
I push them off and get back on my feet. Screw this. I hoist a pig under each arm and haul them to the other side of the road. Miraculously, the rest of the creatures follow.
“There.” I set them down gently and gesture to the farm. “Take your pigs.”
“Piggycorns.”
“Same thing.”
I look down and notice the smudges of dirt that line my sleeves and three-piece suit. It looks like I’ve been rolling around in mud. Fantastic.
She brushes dust off her hands. “Thank you.”
It’s the first nice thing she’s said, and it makes my chest swell with pride.
So I ignore it.
Sunbeam tips up her face and smiles. This woman really is stunning. And frustrating. And aggravating. But she also smells really, really good—like wildflowers on a cloudless day.
Her warm eyes hold mine for a breath before she blinks and looks off, taking in my shirt and suit, which are ruined. “I’m so sorry,” she says, panicky. “Your clothes. Let me get you something to change into.”
I smile grimly. “Overalls? No thanks.”
She frowns, which makes a divot pop between her brows. “I’m sure I can find pants and a shirt.”
Then her gaze rips from me to the fence and house. The fence is splintered, and the house looks the same—old and tired. She draws her eyes away from the home to my cuff links—hammered gold, from Milan.
She nibbles on her bottom lip in an expression I’ve seen before—the realization that I’ve got wealth.
And she hungers for it.
Yet surprisingly, the longing vanishes and is replaced with unease. She seems to shrink right in front of me, tugging on the collar of her thin white T-shirt and tucking one booted foot behind the other.
“Goodbye and good luck,” I tell Sunbeam before jogging back to the SUV.
When I get in, Stone coughs into his fist. “You stink like a pig.”
“As if you know what one smells like.”
“I do now.”
I roll my eyes. “You could have helped.”
“And miss out on watching you? No way. That was a memory worth imprinting on my brain forever.” I put the SUV in drive and hit the gas. He watches the farm as we roll past. “Did you get her number?”
I bark out a laugh. “No.”
“Why not? Maybe she’s not a social climber.”
“As far as a Maddox is concerned, they’re all either social climbers or fortune hunters.”
“So Sylvia says,” Stone says bitterly. “I don’t know. Looked like the two of you were hitting it off. Oh, wait. Maybe I’m thinking of the pig that was climbing all over you. Let me know when you plan to introduce your new girlfriend to the family. Does she have a special diet? Slop, maybe?”
“You are hysterical,” I say dryly.
“I looked up the farm while I had all of eternity to wait for you. It’s a petting zoo. You can also buy a piggycorn, but from the looks of the place, no one’s visited in the last decade. Not like that unicorn farm over there.”
He nods to a glossy, white-washed fence. The whole place practically glows, it’s so beautiful—green meadows, frolicking unicorns. Allergy attacks.
“Why don’t I have one of those?” he says. “I would love a unicorn. Look how cool that is.”
I eye a white horse with a golden horn poking out of its head. “Too common for folks like us.”
My brother smirks. “Does nothing impress you?”
“No.”
“Pane, your black heart will one day be softened.”
“Doubtful.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He wags a finger in the air. “If unicorns and piggycorns can’t melt you, nothing can.”
As we drive off, my gaze flicks to the rearview mirror, where I get one last glimpse of the brunette as she disappears behind her fence.
Just thinking of what she said—Whether it gets done today or tomorrow, it’s got to get done—pisses me off all over again.
Good. Stay pissed off. I don’t have time for fortune hunters in my life. Don’t let the country-girl persona fool you—where money’s concerned, she’s like all the rest, willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get it.
Stone’s phone rings and he puts it on speaker. “Hello, Sylvia.”
“Boys, where are you? The plane leaves in fifteen minutes.”
My shoulders tense. Thanks to Sunbeam, I’m all worked up, and I have to bite back the growl in my voice. “We’re on our way.”
“Good,” my mother replies just as sharply. “Because I’m about to choose the next president of the Maddox Hotel Group. It’s going to be one of you. But which one?”