Chapter 13 #2
“Opportunistic bullshitters like that only care about making more and more money and are only out for themselves.” I put down my spoon and it clangs against the bowl.
“Fuck them and their fight to get our beautiful land so they can wreck this area and add another few million to their bank accounts.”
His eyebrows shoot up, like he’s shocked by the strength of my feelings. “Then why do you still have the contracts? And keep them out where you can see them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because although I have all the faith in the world that I can do anything I set my mind to, I can’t be totally sure that I can pull this off.”
A lump rises in my throat as if I’d just swallowed one of the hunks of crusty bread whole and it got stuck there.
“So, you’re keeping these offers as, like…a backup plan?” His voice is soft and caring, but also curious and interested, like he cares about what happens here.
I shrug and pick up my wine. The coolness of the glass against my fingertips is somehow grounding.
“Would you like me to look them over?” he asks. “Not that I don’t think you’re perfectly capable of assessing them yourself. Just that sometimes it’s good to have a second opinion.”
“A second opinion that we should sell?”
“If that’s what’s right for your circumstances. Which it…” he raises his dark eyebrows as he hesitates, “might be.”
“I’m okay for now, thanks.” Of course he thinks that selling is the sensible thing. He’s a business guy. And I don’t need to hear that again. “I’ve decided to hold a big Thanksgiving event to give the fundraising a big boost. And, right now, all my attention is on pulling that together.”
Those words sound pathetic. Like I’m a child who thinks they can buy their parents a new house if they just get a few more pennies in their piggy bank.
There’s silence for a few moments as we both eat and sip.
“Is your grandmother part of the reason you don’t want to let this place go?” He says it as if he’s spent the whole silence working himself up to ask that question.
The remainder of a slice of bread falls from my hand into my soup with a heavy sploosh. “What makes you ask that?”
“You mentioned her earlier. That you have such amazing memories of her at that big art barn.”
“Windwood Barn. Yes.” I fish out the bread with my spoon. Grandma would have been proud that I didn’t just stick my fingers in to pick it out. “And amazing memories of her here too.”
“How long ago did you lose her?” he asks.
“Eleven years.” The lump swells in my throat, so I drop the soupy bread onto my side plate.
“Tell me if it’s too personal or you don’t want to talk about it.” He rests his elbows on either side of his bowl and settles his chin on his hands. “But had she been ill?”
A surge of emotion swells inside me, not just to tell someone about Grandma, but to tell him everything. What is it about this enigmatic virtual stranger that makes me want him to know my stories?
I clasp my hands in my lap under the table and look at Miller.
“She had cancer. In her liver. It was very fast. Six weeks after she was diagnosed, Grandpa found her in the big barn. The one you’re staying in.
She’d collapsed near the tractor. But she was still alive.
Thank God he found her because he was able to hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her before she went. ”
Miller turns a hand to cover his mouth as he blows out a long breath. His eyes look as shiny as mine feel.
Something passes across the table, something similar to the charged sparks that fizzed between us when he backed into me in the kitchen yesterday. Similar but different. This isn’t just surface-level attraction and chemistry. This has more layers. Like he can actually feel what I’m feeling.
The emotional rush of that unexpected deeper connection, combined with talking about losing Grandma, produces spikes in the lump in my throat and burns my eyes.
“Oh, Frankie.” There’s a hoarseness to Miller’s voice, so he pauses to clear his throat. “I hate that you went through that.”
“It’s okay.” I wipe my eyes with the end of my sleeve. “I’m fine. Really, I am. And if I’d told you that story in Chicago it probably wouldn’t have affected me as much. It’s just that she’s everywhere in this place.”
I sniff loudly, and take a large swig of wine.
“I feel so bad about everything,” he says, his eyes half closing as he drops his head into his hands and rubs his forehead.
“There’s absolutely nothing for you to feel bad about.” I hold tight onto my glass with both hands to stop myself from reaching across the table to lay a reassuring touch on his arm. “I’m just happy that you’re here to help.”
Another sniff, another sip of wine, and I put on my happy face. “Now, eat up and tell me something fun. Like where else you’ve been so far on your digital-nomading travels.”
He looks up at me from under his hand with a rueful smile. “Oh, you don’t need to hear about that.”
“It wasn’t that funny,” Miller huffs as I snort and hold my stomach at the memory of him hightailing it across the paddock with Harley in hot pursuit.
“Oh, God.” I finally catch my breath and wipe my eyes with my sleeve again, this time banishing tears of joy, not heartbreak.
This man really is wonderful company. In fact, he’s the perfect package with his easy charm and quick tongue softened by self-deprecating humor. And the fact that he runs his own investment business must mean he’s not afraid of hard work or responsibility.
Not to mention, it’s impossible not to be drawn to the sparkle in his eyes or notice the line of his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, the shadow of stubble across his chin, and the way the white T-shirt stretches across his chest and shoulders and shows off his biceps.
And Lord save me from the sight of those forearms that make me ache with the need to stroke them and feel the light tickle of the fine coating of dark hairs on my fingers.
Does this man have a fault?
“I’m afraid it was hilarious.” I drain my wine glass and stand to gather up our dishes. My head has a gentle swimmy buzz from a glass and a half of wine.
Miller follows, stopping at the sink where he tries and fails to turn the tap hard enough to stop the drip.
“It’s been doing that for ages,” I tell him.
But he’s still trying when I turn away.
After a minute I sense his presence next to me at the dishwasher, where he’s watching me load it.
“Would you like me to explain just how wrong your methodology is?” he asks.
“Dishwashers are something you have strong feelings about? Actually, I think you have strong feelings about clean things, so I suppose that would include washing dishes.”
“I have strong feelings about things fitting together properly,” he says. “Be that dishwasher contents or buildings or”—he stills for a second, his eyes flicking to mine as he moves a mug I’d put on the bottom rack to the top—“people.”
My hand presses on my chest to quell the shudder running through my heart and to smother the thudding sound it’s making, which he’s close enough to hear.
Would he and I fit together? I’m sure I’d slot perfectly under his arm, that my face would fill the exact gap between his neck and his shoulder, and that my legs would hook over his hips just right.
It’s only now I admit to myself that I assessed all of those things, without even realizing it, within minutes of opening the door to him yesterday.
“Buildings?” I ask, picking out the most innocuous item from his list to distract myself from the swirl of inappropriate thoughts. “Of all the things you could have picked that fit together, like jigsaw puzzles, or honeycombs, or zipper teeth, or whatever, what on earth made you pick buildings?”
“Not sure.” His attention is entirely on the contents of the dishwasher now. “I guess they just have to fit together properly or they fall down. And if they fell down it would be fairly catastrophic.”
I need to get this man out of here before I become so mesmerized by the shift of the muscles in his dish-rearranging arms that I either pass out or jump on him.
Both would be equally humiliating.
“Okay.” I clap my hands together, all businesslike. “Let’s stop playing chess with the dirty dishes. It’s getting dark. Time to put the kids to bed.”
The warm smile is back on his face when he straightens. “Is that what you call the donkeys? The kids?”
He takes a step back to allow me to drop in a dishwasher tablet. “It’s what Grandma and Grandpa always used to say when it was time to bring them in for the night.” But it feels silly now.
I press the button, close the dishwasher door and turn around to find Miller’s hand right up by my face.
“Oof.” My heart takes off like a startled rabbit and I jump back, crashing into the vibrating dishwasher.
“Sorry,” he says, his face barely a foot away from mine. “Didn’t mean to make you jump. I just noticed you still had a piece of this in your hair.”
He produces a single stalk of hay, like a conjurer wowing a child by pretending to pull a coin from their ear.
Our eyes meet, but don’t lock. They wander over each other’s faces, both searching, looking for something, maybe for who the other person is, or maybe for who we really are ourselves.
My pulse races from the surprise of him being so close and maybe from the surprise of him being here with me at all.
The air between us hums with the buzz of standing just a foot or so away from someone who’s basically a stranger but who feels anything but. His strong jaw and plump, cushiony lips seem somehow familiar, like the universe is trying to remind me of something I’ve forgotten.
I expect him to step back and throw the hay into the trash. But he doesn’t. He stays where he is. And with every microsecond he remains there, my heart rate increases a little more, my skin tingles a little more, my body heats a little more.
Instead of dropping his hand, Miller reaches for the piece of hair that’s fallen across my face.
“This always escapes your ponytail, huh?” His voice is low and throaty, his lips curving into a smile.
“You noticed that?” Why would he notice that? Has he been watching me as closely as I’ve been watching him?
“Of course.” Miller’s eyes now follow his finger as it lifts the stray hair and hooks it behind my ear, brushing—but barely—the skin at my temple.
Goose bumps shoot down the side of my neck from the slight contact. They are so violent and so sudden that he must be able to see them.
What the hell is going on? Why is my body reacting so much to this man? Why did my brain react to him so much while he was sitting across the kitchen table from me? What is it about him that fascinates every part of me so much?
He leans closer and his lips part, his breath reaching my cheek now. It’s warm, with saltiness from the soup and fruitiness from the wine.
When the backs of his fingers stroke my cheek, my eyelids become heavy and I lean slightly into his touch.
Is he going to kiss me?
If he is, I’m going to let him.
I’m going to let this man kiss me, and it’s a truly terrible idea.
I don’t have the time or headspace for any kind of involvement.
Between trying to get this place solvent and fighting for the promotion back in Chicago, I barely have enough gray matter to go around without being distracted by these startlingly kissable lips that are attached to a startlingly intriguing man.
But in this moment my body wants it more than anything in the world and, for the first time in a long time, I’m going to let it have what it wants. I’m going to let it choose its own adventure.
My inner thighs tingle as we lean into each other until the tips of our noses brush.
The shock of a knocking and tapping noise jolts my entire body and sends us both leaping apart, my heart pounding like an explosion has rocked the ground under me.
“What the fuck is that?” Miller asks.
“Oh, Jesus. It’s Dave.” I clutch my thumping chest and look over my shoulder to see the donkey’s nose nudging the window open.
“Shit.” Miller pushes his hand through his almost-dry hair. “I wondered what the hell was going on.”
“Me too.” Though I’m more perplexed by what was just going on between us than by there being a donkey at the window.
“He gets out somehow and comes for snacks,” I explain, desperate to return the atmosphere to a more normal, less likely to burst into flames if anyone lit a match state. “He learned to open the window years ago. Grandpa gave him a carrot the first time, so he just kept doing it.”
“I’ll go get the rest of them inside,” Miller says.
“Yes. Good idea.” Thank God. Actually, thank Dave for saving me from myself. “This guy will follow you when he’s had his treat.”
I take a carrot from the jar next to the window and snap it into three.
Partially because I need an outlet for the pent-up feelings flying around inside me, and partly because it then gives me three things to feed Dave and I can spin it out so I have something to do while Miller picks up his stack of dirty clothes and puts on his boots and jacket.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says as I offer Dave the second chunk of carrot.
“You’re welcome.” I keep my eyes fixed entirely on Dave’s crunching. “See you in the morning.”
In my peripheral vision, Miller nods and opens the door to leave.
“Oh,” I exclaim. “Don’t forget your boxers.” There was probably a better way I could have put that, but the words flew out the instant I remembered them.
“What?”
Annoyingly, my head instinctively turns to look at him and our eyes meet again as his brow furrows in puzzlement.
There’s a pause as I tip my head toward the shelf over the baseboard heater.
“Oh, yeah.” His lips curl up a little at the corners as he retrieves his slightly soupy, slightly burned boxers and adds them to the pile of clothes. “Thanks.”
And then he’s gone, his tall, muscular frame walking away from me, toward the darkness of the main enclosure.
I give the donkey the final third of the carrot and rub his nose. “What the fuck just happened there, Dave?”