Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FRANKIE
“What’s that?” Miller asks as I drive past the old Windwood barn that’s covered in torn tarps flapping in the breeze.
“It was my favorite place to go when I was a kid. There were all kinds of artists’ workshops and activities there. My grandparents took me every time I was here.”
“Looks like it has great structure.” Miller puts his arm around my seat to help him turn to look back at it.
A little shiver passes through me, as if my body’s imagining what it would be like if the seat wasn’t in between his arm and my back. But no good can come of any thoughts like that. No matter what Paige says.
“What was it like inside?” he asks.
“The center of it was a café. Super pretty with the big high-beamed ceiling. And around the outside there were two floors of studio spaces for like painters, potters, jewelry makers, fashion designers, all sorts. It was busy all the time and packed on weekends and holidays.”
“Then why did it go out of business?”
“The owners passed away and left it to their kids who are all off being hot shots in New York or Los Angeles or wherever. They didn’t give a damn. And when the manager quit they just shut it down and ignored it. And now the building’s in a terrible state.”
“You’d think they’d have sold it. At least for the land,” Miller says. “Must be worth a lot now, with the rail line coming.”
“Apparently they all already have more money than sense. There’s talk that one of them has notions of building themselves a big fancy summer house there but hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“It sounds like that makes you sad.” His tone is full of empathy.
And even if I couldn’t see out of the corner of my eye that his head is turned toward me, I’d still be able to feel his gaze on me. There’s a heat to it, an awareness, a sense that he’s not just looking at me, but looking into me.
My fingers wrap a little tighter around the steering wheel. “Well, after we lost my grandma, I’d take Grandpa and he’d love sitting with a coffee and reminiscing about things the three of us did there together.”
I do a decent job of keeping the constriction in my throat under control, but fail completely with the tear that’s risen out of nowhere and is running down my cheek so fast it’s already almost at my chin.
I brush it away with a quick swipe on the way to tucking my hair behind my ear, in the hope Miller doesn’t notice.
“I can tell it means a lot to you,” he says.
He seems to be able to tell a lot of things.
“Well, fuck it.” I hang up the phone that’s been ringing for about two minutes and toss it onto the dashboard.
We can’t find anyone around to give us the hay I ordered.
“I told them we’d be here about now,” I say to Miller, who’s standing beside my open truck door. “We’re down to only one bale, for God’s sake. And I really don’t want to have to come back tomorrow.”
“Where do they keep it?” he asks.
“In that gray metal barn.” I point at the large structure enclosed by a split rail fence, and he immediately strides toward it.
“I already looked,” I call to his back. “There’s no one there.”
Good God, he looks good from behind. And from the front. It’s just less polite to stare at his front as much as I’m staring at his rear view right now.
He walks along the perimeter of the fence for a little way before turning back to me and beckoning me over.
I climb out of the truck and trot toward him.
When I get there, he points at a square of cardboard on a stack of bales that has “Frankie” written on it in black marker.
Each pile has a sign on it. There’s “Chuck,” “Wilkersons,” “Betty,” and others I can’t read from this distance.
“Great. So we can see it, but can’t get to—” The sight of Miller climbing the fence silences me. Not only because it’s possibly one of the most surprisingly hot things I’ve ever seen, it also has an edge of danger. “You probably shouldn’t do that.”
He pauses, almost at the top of the chest-high barrier. “Have you already paid for it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s not stealing.” He swings one leg over the top and looks down at me like he’s sitting astride a majestic horse. If it were possible for a smile to swagger, that smile is swaggering right across his face. “Back up the truck.”
“I meant you shouldn’t do it because you might hurt yourself,” I say as he swings the other leg over and climbs down in a way that draws my attention to his powerful thighs and makes the heat between my legs pulse like it has its own heartbeat.
“About time my use of the climbing wall at the gym came in handy.” He produces his gloves from his pocket and slaps them against his thigh.
Then, oh my good God, he winks at me before turning to the pile of bales with my name on it.
A wink should be a cheesy thing that a friend’s dad does when he makes a bad joke. A wink should not make me more aware of the existence of my nipples than I’ve been for a very long time.
I’ve taken several steps back toward the truck before I even realize I’m following his instruction. Apparently I’m doing what I’m told. I can’t even remember the last time someone took charge of something and told me what to do.
Well, I mean, Dickish Darren at work has tried. But in that professional environment I just bite my tongue and walk away.
With Miller, it lights me up with a sort of charged buzz. A very pleasant one. And that is so confusing because I don’t want to be bossed around by anyone. Or taken charge of by anyone.
But as I hop up into the driver’s seat and turn the key in the ignition, it occurs to me that he’s not actually bossing me around or taking charge of me. What he’s doing is supporting me by coming up with a way to solve a problem, by having an idea that I hadn’t had.
Fuck, yeah. That’s…attractive.
I back the truck up as close to the fence as I can get it, right at the spot where Miller is stacking my bales in two piles, right next to each other, on the other side.
“Careful you don’t hurt your back.” Not sure what I’m worrying about, his lifting technique is impressive. “Those things are heavy.”
“Again,” he says, carrying a bale toward me, “the gym finally comes in useful for something.”
He drops it to the ground to create a step up to the higher pile on the left.
Despite the chill in the air, he takes off his gloves so he can wipe his brow with the back of his hand, then slides his work jacket off his broad, square shoulders.
My brain immediately turns it into one of those slow-motion commercials for designer sports drinks, where a guy chugs from a bottle just as an unexpected burst of torrential rain hits him and makes his T-shirt stick to his chest.
Miller hooks his jacket over a fence post and unbuttons a cuff of his shirt.
“Don’t do that,” I shout, as he starts to turn it back.
Not that the idea of catching another glimpse of his forearms offends me.
“Keep your sleeves down. Hay can get stuck in your skin and it’s really painful.
Take that from fourteen-year-old me who once, and only once, insisted on walking through the stable in flip flops.
My grandma spent hours working on my feet with a pair of tweezers that night. And I might have cried.”
“Okay. Good to know.” He unfolds the cuff and rebuttons it, then puts his gloves back on before returning to the work of moving my bales until they’re all stacked by the fence.
He climbs up the pile that’s forming steps, grabs the top bale from the higher pile next to it, swings it over the fence and drops it into the bed of the truck.
“Wow.” Jesus, could I really not stop that from flying out of my mouth?
My cheeks burn red hot. I must sound like I’m in danger of swooning. And while I might be, I certainly don’t want him to know that.
“Delighted to be of service,” he says with a flick of an eyebrow.
I busy myself climbing into the truck bed and shoving the bale to the back so the next one doesn’t hit it.
We continue the process until Miller’s hay stacks are too low for him to throw them over the fence.
“That’s enough.” I knock hay dust off my hands. “These ten bales will keep us going until Barry can bring the rest over. I’ll write a note and shove it through the front door to tell them what we took so they don’t think there are a bunch of hay-stealing bandits around.”
Miller grabs his jacket, puts it back on, climbs up the remaining bales, then swings himself over the top of the fence exactly as he did earlier.
This time, he doesn’t climb down the outside, he jumps from what I consider to be a dangerous height and makes a solid, unwavering landing about two feet away from me, causing the ground under my feet to vibrate for a fraction of a second.
My heart vibrates with it.
And my belly.
And my hands.
Seriously, I could quite happily just stand here and look at him for the next couple of hours. He is so attractive he’s almost a parody of attractive. And he also just saved the day with the donkeys’ dinner, which ratchets up his attractiveness quotient exponentially.
I’m snapped back to reality when he removes his gloves, shoves them into his pockets and dusts his hands together.
“All right,” he says, like it’s a job well done. “Let’s go feed some donkeys.”
There’s that swaggery smile again.
And, yup. There are my nipples.