Delivery to the Farmhouse (Havenwood Cowboys Romance #4)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

T hat was all I needed. Trap Colton Holden on the road and splash mud all over him.

Lifting a hand, he wiped sludge from his cheek, and—to my surprise—continued moving toward me. The brown slime climbed its way over the cowboy’s boots, licking the hem of his jeans. His movements were slow, but he made his way to my car.

Way to go, Natalie, you’re really winning today.

I pushed my window down. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

Colton’s lips pressed tightly together. Wet dirt flecked his cheeks, forehead, and eyes. A large glob hung from his chin, and I couldn’t help the snigger that escaped my lips.

“I’m glad I could make you laugh at least,” he said dryly. “I came to offer my help?—”

“And now it looks like you need mine.”

Sacrificing my new sneakers to the mud gods, I pushed open my door and attempted to stand. One foot sank. Then the next. The clay was cold. It crept into my sock line.

“I’ll be all right,” Colton began, but I didn’t listen.

The truth was, I wasn’t getting out to help him—I was going to help myself. I’d push my car out of this if I had to. Anything that got me away from here faster.

I attempted a turn mid-step, but I lost my footing.

“Whoa, now.” Colton offered his hands.

I did not want him touching me. My arms windmilled, and in trying to turn toward my car, I slipped for good on the squelchy gloop. My knees buckled out from beneath me; I lost my balance, landing face-first in thick, wet, oozy mud .

This day just kept getting better and better.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, spitting the cold slime out of my mouth.

It smothered my entire front. Neck, chest, arms, and legs. I was pretty sure I had mud creeping down my cleavage.

To his credit, Colton didn’t laugh. “You are covered, Miss Natalie.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” My snark had a mind of its own when provoked, and believe me, if any mindless comment were to provoke me right now, it was him telling me something I already knew.

Pushing myself to my feet, I used the car for support rather than Colton’s offered hands. I lifted a hand to my face and attempted to wipe the guck from my eyes. The attempt was a success—sort of.

The problem was that mud already caked my fingers, so while I smeared away enough to clear my vision, it still covered my face in what I was sure would put any mud-wrestler to shame.

Colton smirked at me. Then without warning, he reached for the hemline of his shirt and twined it away from his body, lifting it up over his head. And showcasing his impressively sculpted—and farmer-tanned torso—in all its considerable glory.

I was blasted by the sight of his bare chest and abs, and the most distinctive farmer tan I’d ever seen. It looked like a light-colored tank top covered his top half, except for the extremely defined pecks and the rack of abs climbing around his belly button.

Either he needed to take his shirt off more often while walking through fields doing what farmers do, or?—

My thoughts trailed off…because he brought his finely shaped, multicolored torso closer and lifted his wadded shirt toward me.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed.

I was still thinking along the lines of mud-wrestling here. He wasn’t about to tackle me, was he?

The thought was ludicrous, and yet it was something Jensen might have done.

My heart curled in on itself. Would that man leave my thoughts alone already?

“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m helping you, fool woman.”

Colton’s steps squelched their way toward me.

“Don’t call me a fool.” Or woman.

“From what I’m looking at, I’m sure it hits the mark.” He lifted the shirt toward my face.

I reared away from his touch. “Don’t. You have mud on your shirt.”

“Not on the back,” he said, giving me that smirk again. “You got mud all over your face. I thought I’d help you wipe some of it off.”

“Not with your shirt, thank you.”

“You certainly can’t use yours.”

“Excuse me?”

A little laugh escaped his throat. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—look at it. It’s worse than your face.”

I peered down and stared at my chest. Sure enough, my blue blouse was splattered with sticky, viscous brown mud. It covered all down the front of me, serving as evidence of my face-plant.

“Now, stop squawking and let me help you.”

I glared at him .

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m not doing it because I have to.”

I met his gaze, trying—and failing—not to look at the definition of his shoulders, biceps, and abs. There was something to be said for manual labor.

He lifted his shirt toward my face, and I didn’t fight him this time. Only, he used his hands first.

For a man as tall as he was, he was surprisingly gentle. His thumb stroked beneath my eye, swiping mud away. He then followed it with the soft fabric of his shirt, wiping it across my cheeks and taking a lot of the mud with it.

I couldn’t help staring at the lines on his bare chest and the way his muscles flexed when he moved. Working in the field, moving pipe, and lifting and operating heavy farm equipment had certainly done him all kinds of favors.

At least he wasn’t vain enough to go shirtless on the job just to keep up his looks.

“Looks like one of us got in the other’s way,” he said good naturedly.

A glob of mud fell from the shirt in his hand and spattered on his forearm. He shook it off.

“I think it’s you,” I told him, fighting down a smile.

I did not want to flirt with this man, but the comment slipped right on out.

Twisting at the waist, since his feet were cemented in the sludge, he first peered at my car and then his truck. He probably wondered what all the junk was I had packed into my back seat.

“And I say it’s you,” he said. “I got a way to get you out of this, though.”

“What’s that?” I held my arms away from my body, feeling just how sticky and wet my clothes were. And then I realized I probably looked like the top contender in a wet t-shirt contest—mud edition—and was showing him far more than I wanted to.

I crossed my arms over my chest .

If Colton noticed, he had the decency to at least act like he didn’t. Keeping his attention on the road, he gestured in the direction of the farmhouse.

“Luke up there has some machinery on the farm. I’m sure we could find something that’ll wrench you out. Care to take a stroll?”

What other choice did I have?

“That would be great,” I said, lightening up.

The truth was, this was kind of sweet. Colton had come to my rescue. He had quite literally given me the shirt from off his back—the least I could do was let him help me. Especially since I didn’t have many other options.

The mud wasn’t his fault, nor was my current pity party.

Each step I took was a squelch, but before long, we were back on solid ground, treading along the dirt tracks on either side of growth down the road’s center.

“What were you doing all the way out here?” Colton asked.

“I had a delivery,” I said.

Colton frowned. “Delivering what, brownies?”

“My parents were postal workers. I thought you knew I was their mail carrier. I mean, I was before.”

“I was not aware of that.”

“My parents…misplaced a package, and I was just bringing it out to Belle. What about you? What are you doing all the way out here?”

“I came to see if I could get a pretty girl out of a big mess.”

He glanced at me at the same time I looked his way, and the collision of our gazes was a wrecking ball right in my stomach. But that wasn’t happening. He wasn’t funny. Or cute. Or charming.

I refused to be amused by this.

Bear, remember?

“No, really. What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Luke, Belle, and I are talking about the farm,” Colton said. “He’s wondering about cultivating some of the land Belle owns instead of renting it out to other farmers, I was going to give him some pointers.”

“That’s nice of you.” We rounded the bend, my shoes continuing to squish with each step I took. They were completely brown. Poor, sad, new shoes. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get them to be as white as they were this morning.

“That’s good of Luke to have a change of scene.”

“Yeah. He’s been the farmhand here for years. Now that he’s no longer living in the shed there—“ he pointed to the shed just off from the house, “—he’s looking to hire someone else to handle the duties while he moves on to farming.”

“I’d like to move on, too,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He glanced my way as if he wanted details. But I wasn’t about to divulge the current emptiness creating a cavern where my heart should be.

“I need a job. Something new.” Something that didn’t make me feel like I was trapped.

“Sounds like there’s a farmhand position for the taking,” Colton said with a crooked smile I’d never realized he was capable of. It made my stomach do a little flip.

Of all the Holden boys, I’d probably paid him the least amount of attention. He was good-looking in his own rights, every bit as handsome as Luke, Dawson, or Bryce. His features were longer—in fact, all of him was just taller. His body was lankier than the others’, too.

The main thing that had kept me from speaking much to him before now was that he’d just been so quiet. Even with the fallout that had happened between Bryce and me, even with the kind attention Luke had paid me afterward. In every situation I’d been in with the Holden boys, I’d interacted more with every other brother except Colton.

I didn’t know him well at all .

“Thanks, but I can’t see myself becoming a farmhand.”

“Could be fun,” he said.

“Hauling manure. Where do I sign up?”

“Who’s hauling manure?”

We turned to find Luke strolling our way, his blond hair covered by a cowboy hat. From what I remembered, Bryce was the eldest. Then Luke, then Colton. Dawson and Kyler brought up the rear.

Colton’s eyes were a similar shade of blue to Luke’s, twinkling at me as he smiled.

“Miss Natalie here wants a job,” he said.

“I don’t. I’m fine, I was just?—“

Luke grinned at his brother, his eyes scaling him from head to toe. “What happened to you, Colt? I thought you had brains enough to use a pitchfork when hauling manure.”

“We need a favor,” Colton said, ignoring his brother’s jibe and the fact that he was still shirtless and spattered with mud.

Luke squinted beneath the brim of his hat. “Does it have something to do with your pale skin blaring at me? Where’d your shirt go?”

“Natalie took it off. She couldn’t keep her hands off me.”

“I did not!”

Colton grinned at me. I lifted the mud-slathered shirt and threw it at him. It hit him squarely in the chest and then fell to the ground with a squelchy thud.

Laughing, Colton bent for the shirt. I pushed him, making him stagger and reminding myself a little too much of a child on a playground. Meanwhile, Belle stepped out onto her porch and down the steps.

The alarm in her face was evident. Her eyes boggled, and she lifted her hands as if she was stopping traffic.

“Natalie? What happened?” she asked.

“I’m stuck on your lane,” I said, turning and hugging my arms over my chest. “Is there any way you can help dig me out? ”

“Keys are in the ignition. The tractor’s parked by the goat pen,” Luke said. “Won’t take me a minute to get it fired up.”

Belle intercepted, throwing her arm in his direction. “But you can’t go back to your car like that! You’ll get mud everywhere. Come with me. You can get cleaned up while the guys dig out your car.”

Not caring in the slightest about the mud covering me, she hooked a hand behind my back and guided me, not to the farmhouse’s honeycomb-shaped porch, but to the back door on the lefthand side.

“That would be amazing,” I said, glad she’d thrown me this bone.

“You got this, Luke?” she called over her shoulder.

“We got it,” Colton said.

“We’ll get you out,” Luke added.

“This will be easier,” Belle said, holding the back door open for me. “We’ve got a washroom you can strip down in and get right into the shower without having to trail through the rest of the house.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “I’d feel horrible dripping mud all over your floor.”

Belle flicked on the light inside the door to her left, and sure enough, it was a washroom—newly finished, from the look of things.

A washing machine and dryer rumbled with a batch of clothes near the far wall. The pleasant scent of fabric softener wafted through the little room. There was a toilet, a drain in the floor, and a walk-in shower in the corner. It reminded me of something that might be in a pool house.

“You look like you’re about the same size as me. I’ll get you some clothes and set them there.” She bent beneath the sink and retrieved bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

“Here you go,” she said. “And there are towels in that cupboard.” She indicated the lower cupboard beside the washing machine.

I was touched by her hospitality and chastised myself for my earlier cynicism. She was so kind—kinder than I deserved.

Just because I was feeling sorry for myself didn’t mean I had to be so snarky, did it?

“Thanks, Belle,” I said, resolving to do better.

“Of course. Take your time.”

Smiling, she closed the door behind her and left me alone. I stripped down, and she was right; it was definitely better taking care of this mess in here rather than trailing mud into my car or worse, into my new apartment. I doubted Dorothy would much appreciate the mess—and it saved me the trouble of having to scrub carpets or something awful like that.

I’d much rather wash it all down the drain. If only I could wash the listlessness I was feeling down with it.