Chapter 15
Kitt crawled down off the hay baler with a jaw-cracking yawn tearing across his lips.
It was three forty-five in the morning, and he couldn’t sleep.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, smearing oil and engine soot across his forehead, and shrugged his Carhartt jacket off his shoulders, tossing it aside.
It didn’t seem to matter how hard he worked, or what he did.
Kitt’s mind stayed completely wrapped around Austin, not giving him the slightest break, not even to get a couple of hours of sleep.
Night two of Austin being gone, and it amazed Kitt how much he missed the man.
At the same time, it scared the crap out of him.
He’d thought he had a better mental hold of himself.
His arms seemed to miss holding Austin at night.
When he closed his eyes, the only thing he saw was the image of Austin smiling his big, toothy, sexy grin.
Austin’s real smile. The one he wore any time he teased Kitt, or they laughed about something just between the two of them. Kitt missed that smile.
Kitt didn’t call Austin the first night.
Fear kept him from making the call. His heart was too closely connected, making him too involved.
Kitt needed to put distance between them.
Complications weren’t his thing. Kitt lived his life as a total drama-free zone, and it needed to stay that way.
The movie star, Austin Grainger, had a drama-filled complication stamped right on his forehead.
Austin needed to either move back to Hollywood, or move back to the place in Kitt’s mind where they were fuck buddies.
Fuck buddies didn’t matter. They were tension relievers and nothing more.
Kitt shouldn’t care about how Austin coped in his crazy-ass situation back in California.
He hadn’t ever thought about Sean’s ability to cope in any situation.
Kitt got himself in straight up, pure self-protection mode.
If Kitt could slip Austin back in the right spot inside his brain, it wouldn’t hurt so badly to be without him, and Kitt definitely would be without Austin.
If these last two days were any indication of the future, Kitt would be a big whiny-ass mess when Austin finally left him for good. He couldn’t let it happen.
To give Austin credit, he kept Kitt informed.
He messaged every few hours both day and night.
Austin told Kitt everything they were doing, and every text included sweet words of missing him.
Austin also started calling. Kitt let the calls go to voice mail.
Around midnight tonight, he finally responded to another text Austin sent, asking if Kitt made it home yet to give him a call.
He didn’t lie when he said no, but he’d just left his house to come back to the barn once he figured out there would be no sleep tonight either.
The text he’d sent back was a moment of weakness laced with a small amount of compassion.
Kitt got the impression Austin was a little desperate, or it could’ve just been his own emotion he read inside the typed words of the text.
He probably shouldn’t have asked how Austin held up; it invited conversation.
But he couldn’t help it. Austin replied back immediately, he was just waiting for Cara to wake so they could board the flight.
Kitt told himself it was nothing more than polite manners, not the deep connection he felt, that had him texting back a simple, “Make sure you take care of yourself.” Kitt didn’t reply to anything else.
An old fold-up chair sat in the corner of the work barn housing the baler.
Kitt sat down with a thump and dropped his head in his hands.
There were so many other things he should be thinking about besides Austin.
He had two long days in front of him to get ready for a longer month of hay cutting and baling.
His entire farm would work from sun up to sundown, seven days a week.
They needed to cut and bale thousands and thousands of acres of hay, and in return, Kitt would be getting half of every field they worked as payment.
On top of all that, he’d only gotten two firm contracts to sell the hay. He’d had some verbal promises, but they were falling through. As it stood right now, if he didn’t get on the phone and start making some calls, he’d be stuck with about twenty thousand bales with nowhere to put them.
Kitt shook his head hard. Okay, so thinking about the farm caused as much tension and worry as thinking about Austin.
So what else could divert his sleep deprived brain?
Kitt rose, grabbing a stray wash rag as he strode from one barn to the next, making his way to Lady.
She was the current pride of the farm, his best quarter horse.
Kitt caught it happening in her without doing the math, or any exam at all.
He saw Lady’s belly tightening up and watched her moving a little stiffly.
He’d brought her in the barn yesterday, keeping her close by.
She was early. The vet planned to come out in the morning to do a full exam on her, see if Kitt was correct in his guess.
He couldn’t wait, though, for her to give birth, and for the first time in two days his heart lightened.
He felt it in his bones that her new little colt was going to be something special: the first of four special somethings happening to the farm—two colts and two fillies if the sonograms held true.
They were all sired by the previous year’s Triple Crown racing champion.
Surely to God, they would sell in the tens of thousands on the open market.
Their sire had won at twenty-to-one odds and blew his competition away at all three derbies.
With the Triple Crown title winner as their sire, these yearlings should sell easily come spring, maybe even before then.
Besides these four, Kitt saved four of the eight vials he had received as payment for tutoring the son of the owner of the winning stallion.
If he could do this same thing again, he might be turning a solid profit this time next year.
Wouldn’t it be something to have money in the bank instead of all this debt hanging over his head?
Kitt perched a leg and both arms on the gate to Lady’s stall.
Their eyes met and she turned away. It caused him to chuckle.
She only did things on her terms, making Kitt lucky she seemed to like him.
This mare was his favorite; she had a way of seeing inside him.
They connected for a minute as she turned back to him before walking over.
He wiped his oil-stained hands on his jeans, knowing she was expecting a good rub.
He opened the gate, went inside and gave her one.
Before he turned away, she did her signature move and knocked his ball cap off his head.
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Well, I guess you are,” he said, grinning as he picked up his cap and put it back on his head. He hadn’t stepped far enough away because she was right there again, knocking it off his head.
“Good night, girl.” Kitt laughed, picking up the cap again.
The grin stayed with him as he cut off the lights and made his way back to his truck.
Another deep yawn started and lasted as he got inside and started the engine.
It was completely dark outside and seemed like he was very much alone.
He wondered if Austin’s people still watched him, or if they had stopped since Austin wasn’t around.
Kitt drove the trail home with the windows rolled down so that the cold night air would keep him awake.
His phone sounded off at the same time his mind went fully back to Austin.
He thought about ignoring the call, but it was almost morning.
Kitt couldn’t help the confused smile tugging at his lips when he saw Austin’s name on his screen.
Even with all the lecturing he’d just given himself, Kitt was too tired to resist, and answered on the third ring.
“Everything okay?” Kitt asked, bypassing the standard greeting.
“Are you awake?” Austin asked.
“I am now,” Kitt teased, the smile still on his face. Austin’s voice soothed his soul and calmed his nerves like nothing had before.
Silence.
“I’m kiddin’; I’m up. I couldn’t sleep. How are you?” Kitt pulled the truck to the front of his cabin, then turned off the engine, but sat in the cab waiting for Austin to answer.
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” Austin asked, his voice weirdly quiet.
“I don’t know. I guess I just have a lot on my mind right now,” Kitt said, resting his arm out the window.
He kept the phone to his ear and leaned his head back against the headrest. It was worse than Kitt had realized.
He was so edgy because he missed Austin, and just his voice put everything back to right in his world.
“Am I part of what’s on your mind?”
It took a second, but Kitt finally answered somewhat honestly, “Maybe a little.”
“Hmm… I like that. You’re on my mind, too.
I couldn’t sleep. One night tucked away in a sleeping bag with you, and now my body thinks your arms need to be around me in order to get some rest.” Austin chuckled as he said the words Kitt felt so deeply in his heart.
There was another pause before he spoke.
“How’re things there?” Kitt asked.