CHAPTER THREE
Bryce
“That doesn’t go there.” Leanne’s voice carries across the open space of the event barn, and it instantly puts me on alert.
I’m bent over, smoothing a large swath of burlap across the circular gift table.
With a quick glance, I see everyone else has cleared out, and my spine stiffens.
I take a deep breath, dropping my shoulders away from my ears—a place they’ve spent too much time over the past several hours—and turn around to face her.
The line between civility and hostility with Leanne is razor-thin, and it only teeters toward the side of civility when others are around.
Which they currently are not.
So, hostility it is. Lucky me.
“I’m working off your plan here, blondie…” I say, exasperated. The very plan she sent me yesterday.
A low growl rumbles out of her, the same way it has every time I’ve called her this—which only makes me want to do it more. “Stop calling me that, and you clearly aren’t looking at the same plan I am.”
“This is the most recent one we have, so…” I trail off and raise my eyebrows. I cross my arms over my chest and clock the way her gaze moves to my biceps where they flex underneath my white T-shirt. Why does that make me want to flex even harder?
“The gift table should be on the other side.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes like a petulant child. Part of me wants to take her over my knee and teach her a lesson if she’s going to act like one. The other part wants to kick my own ass for thinking such a thing.
What is this woman doing to me?
I’m a walking contradiction. My brain says proceed with caution, be nice, be professional, but then my lizard brain takes over and I say shit I’ve never imagined saying to a woman—let alone a client.
I aim to channel some of that professionalism when I say, “No. The dessert table will be on that side. The gifts go here.” I jab a thumb toward the table behind me.
At the end of the day, I’ll do whatever she wants with the tables, but she needs to own up to the fact that they are where they should be.
“Do you not know your right from left?” she asks, and I close my eyes in frustration, squeezing the bridge of my nose.
I honestly can’t figure this woman out. She seems perfectly normal with everyone else—if not a bit high-strung—but as soon as she has to deal with me, the gloves come off.
“You are killing me here,” I say, a plea in my voice I’m not proud of, but fuck, I really am over this. “The rest of the room is set, so unless everything is reversed, this is where the gifts go and that is where the desserts go.”
She looks down at the plan in her hands—the one I know matches mine because I printed them out this morning—then back to me, her lips forming a tight line.
“Well,” she starts, and I wonder if she’s actually going to admit to being wrong. “Regardless, I want desserts on that side and presents over here.”
I tip my head back and groan, running my fingers through my hair for what must be the hundredth time today, the gelled strands having lost all of their stiffness.
I want to laugh at the lunacy of this whole situation.
Instead, I offer her a simpering smile and dip at the waist in a small bow. “Your wish is my command, princess.”
I think her head might explode as her eyes narrow and I watch the color move across her creamy skin. It appears she dislikes that nickname even more than blondie.
I turn away and grab the burlap, then walk to the rectangular table on the other side of the room. “You planning to help me move these tables, or are you happy to keep staring at my ass while I do it?”
I flick a look over my shoulder, and her full lips gape open—reminding me of the fish I catch down in the river.
But she can’t deny it; I’ve caught her checking me out more than once since she arrived this morning.
I shouldn’t get so much satisfaction knowing that, despite her irritation, she seems just as attracted to me as I am to her.
“I… I…” she stammers, and I raise my eyebrows and feel a triumphant smile lance across my face.
She drops her plan with a huff and stalks toward me with her shoulders back, ponytail swinging behind her. I can almost picture her as a matador with a red cape, approaching me like I might attack at any moment.
“It’s okay, honestly. I know I have a good ass.”
She doesn’t respond as she leans down over the far end of the table and lifts from the sides with a glance up at me.
Now it’s my turn to be caught staring. The low scoop of her top leaves little to the imagination in this position, and the flex of her toned arms as she raises the table only makes the view more appealing.
Her cleavage is on full display and there’s a smattering of small freckles on her dewy skin.
I clear my throat, wrap my fingers around the edges, and without breaking eye contact, we move across the room.
Then we repeat the action with the smaller round table, picking it up and arranging it on the other side.
This whole thing is asinine and she knows it, but god forbid she admits defeat. I swear this is just a physical manifestation of the way our communication has gone since day one.
It was the worst kind of whiplash, going from my initial contact with Jenna to dealing with her sister.
They could not have been more different.
Jenna came in with excitement and warmth and curiosity, where Leanne was a bulldozer from her first email hitting my inbox.
Nothing but a long list of demands, many of which don’t align with how we do things here at the ranch.
So it began, and so it continues.
“That’s much better,” she says, dusting off her hands and cutting a path to the exit, taking the last word with her.
This fucking woman.