Chapter 9
LENNON
“Smells good, Graves.” Mateo bumped my shoulder with his as he heaped his plate with food. “You made all this for us?”
“Amos made the eggs, and Cecily made the biscuits. I just did the bacon.”
I didn’t tell him that I had burned the first batch to an inedible degree while daydreaming about a certain cowboy wrapping me up in his coat.
Amos would have banished me from his kitchen, but Cecily had reminded him that Miguel hadn’t shown up for his shift today, so they were still short on help, and anyway, the pigs would be happy to eat the bacon.
The idea of pigs eating their friends made my stomach turn, so I promised I’d eat the burnt bacon myself, even if it took all week.
Mateo took a bite, chewed, and then added two more pieces to his towering plate. “Perfect.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose with his knuckle and grinned at me wide enough for his dimples to pop out.
Then he took his plate and sat down on the stool leaning against the welcome desk, where Holly was already seated with her own full plate, and that weird chicken in her lap.
There was something protective about the way they sat shoulder to knee. Who was protecting who, I wondered.
Of all the cowboys who weren’t Jeremiah, Mateo was my favorite.
He reminded me of a cross between a golden retriever and a border collie.
Outgoing and energetic, a little goofy, hella smart.
One of the nicest and friendliest people I’d ever met.
Not that Jeremiah was rude or mean, because he wasn’t—even though I had given him plenty of reasons to be.
Jeremiah was…contained. Reserved. Protective in a way that I should have found overbearing and annoying, but honestly?
It felt good. No one had ever taken care of me like that before.
No one had ever wrapped me in their own coat like my comfort might be more important than theirs.
Certainly not my mother, who had always been the child in our relationship, or the men who had paid for my time.
Not even Benny, who had been the best of them.
Which wasn’t to say that Jeremiah was my favorite. He wasn’t even in the same category as all the other cowboys in my mind. There was Jeremiah, and then there was everyone else.
“Thanks, Lennon.” Liam raised his plate to me, then grabbed a biscuit.
“Yeah, thanks, Lennon.” Seb was at my elbow with a plate of his own. “I’m starving.”
“Amos and Cecily did most of it.” I suspected they knew that, but I hated taking credit I didn’t deserve. I craved head pats as much as any average girl who didn’t get enough attention from her parents, but I liked to earn them.
“Yeah, but we pay them.” Seb winked. I liked him, too, and I had a feeling a lot of girls felt the same way. It couldn’t be more obvious if he’d had a neon sign flashing on his forehead: Great fuck, terrible boyfriend.
Fine by me. Men were more trouble than they were worth, and it was the biggest disappointment of my life that I remained attracted to them.
The last thing I needed was a new boyfriend when I was still dealing with the fallout from the last one.
A great fuck, though…I wouldn’t say no to that. Depending on who was making the offer.
My gaze strayed to Jeremiah like it was pulled there by a magnet. I didn’t try to kid myself about what that meant. I had made a promise to myself a long time ago, and I had kept it every day since. Everyone else might lie to me, but I never would.
I wanted him.
I wanted him, and unless he’d had a flashlight shoved down his pants during the storm this morning, he wanted me, too.
Judging from the way he stood, arms crossed over his broad chest, a clipboard clenched in one hand, lips flattened to a grim line, he wasn’t too happy about that.
He hadn’t looked at me once since I’d come in ten minutes ago to set up breakfast for them.
And he hadn’t gone near the food.
My eyes narrowed. The cowboys we’d fed earlier had gobbled up the food like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Ranch work led to big appetites. So Jeremiah standing there, refusing to take a single bite? Yeah, I took that personally.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I could fix you a plate.”
He had been glaring at Seb next to me, but now he turned his face away so all I could see was his profile. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. He shook his head, heightened color cresting his cheekbone.
I couldn’t resist poking at him, just a little. If he couldn’t eat my food and fucking like it, then at least he could have the decency to meet my eyes. I wanted him to look at me like he had this morning, the way his blue-gray eyes were blazing hot and soft all at the same time.
Honey.
It wasn’t the first time someone had called me that, but it was the first time it hadn’t been condescending and so damn smug. The way Jeremiah said it, it flowed warm and sweet through my veins.
And now he wouldn’t even look at me.
“You look flushed.” I crossed the room to him. “Maybe you have a fever?”
I lifted my hand, but Jeremiah was faster. His hand snapped to my wrist like one of those old slap bracelets my mom kept from when she was a kid. Shit. I’d gotten what I wanted, made him look at me, but now that I had it, it felt like a lot more than I had bargained for.
For the breathless space of a heartbeat, I had the crazy notion that he was going to kiss me, right here in front of three cowboys, a cowgirl, and—for reasons that remained unclear to me—one very fluffy chicken. But of course he didn’t.
Slowly, he lowered our hands and stepped back, his eyes still locked on mine. “Don’t get too close. You might catch it.”
Too late for that.