Delivery to the Farmhouse (Havenwood Cowboys Romance #4)

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

T his was so not my scene. I’d never done much with regard to outdoor work. Not even yard work, since the old post office I grew up in didn’t have, you know, a yard. The most I’d ever done was water the plants Mom insisted on bringing home.

But I was outside with the summer sun blazing on my neck and sweat dripping in beads down my back. I wore a plain pair of jeans, boots, and a baseball cap, and I slunk along the edges of the barbed wire fence surrounding the scaffolding and wooden beams and tried to act like I belonged.

Millennial Branch had a total of ten townhouses arranged with five facing one way and five facing the other. The five on the southern side of the road were nearing completion. Electrical crews and finishing work was being done on those, while the majority of new construction and framing was being done on the north side.

A pair of men skirted past.

“Like I knew what she meant,” one of them said mid-conversation. “I mean, I was there to do a locate, you know? The company had called for it. How was I supposed to know the owner of the house wasn’t aware? ”

“You’d think he wouldn’t be so upset,” the other guy with him said. “Some people need to take a chill pill.”

“Excuse me,” I said, stepping forward.

The two men stopped and faced me. Both of them had black hair and inches of scruff on their cheeks. They looked so similar I wondered if they were related.

The one on the left shook the hair from his eyes and raked me over. “You new here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I started yesterday.”

“Sweet,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Drake.”

“Natalie,” I said.

“Dan,” the other man said. “Don’t have many chicks on the crew.”

I bristled at the term. “I’m not a bird.”

He raised a brow and then turned away. Women could work construction just as well as men could. Though, a sweeping search of the job site told me he was correct.

Men bent to lift boards. Men strutted with utility belts around their waists and nail guns in their hands. Men sat behind the wheel of the large piece of equipment currently positioning an entire frame of wooden boards upright against another already in place.

That was all the better I was here.

“I’m looking for Jesse,” I said. “Have you seen him?”

“He’s up there with the boss,” Dan—or Drake—said. I’d already forgotten which was which.

Boss? Boss? I saw no boss.

I meandered in the direction Mr. D, which I dubbed him in my head, pointed. Sure enough, Jesse stood on the finished side. And as far as I could tell, he was alone. I didn’t see anyone else with him.

I trekked through the May sunlight, feeling it kick up the heat a few notches with every step so that by the time I reached Jesse in the shade provided by one of the finished townhouses, I rubbed a hand across my forehead.

“Hey, Natalie!” Jesse said, gesturing both hands toward me. “You came back.”

“You didn’t think I would?”

“You up for some painting today?”

Nervous jitters coursed through me. Painting, I could handle. Better than mixing cement, anyway.

I’d helped Mom and Dad paint the apartment a few years ago, and I was ready to meet it head-on. To let everything that had been bothering me lately go.

“Sounds great.”

“Perfect. Come on over this way.”

He circled around to the back of the farthermost in-progress townhouse whose walls were already in place. The pile of roof tresses sat several feet back. Since the frames of the townhomes we passed were skeletal, I could see right in where men stood with measuring tape, doing manly things like beating their chests and...

Okay, there went my imagination again.

In a scene full of testosterone and hot men—wearing shirts, even—I shouldn’t have been startled by any one of them in particular. Not when the view was pretty much the same from every angle.

But the man inside the finished townhouse that Jesse led me into caught my eye. He wore a tight tank top that emphasized the movement of his muscles as he lifted his arms to hold a level next to one of the newly painted walls in what I assumed would be the kitchen once the cabinets were installed.

He inspected it, lowered it again, and shook away the locks of blond hair that had fallen into his eyes.

And my jaw dropped.

I knew that face. I knew that lanky build. And that farmer tan.

I never thought I’d see him here .

“What the what?” I muttered.

It was already warm in here in this too-empty room with its wooden planks on the floor, but a new kind of heat built within my chest. It started at my stomach and climbed into my throat. I pivoted so fast, one of my leather gloves came untucked from my pocket and fell to the wooden floor.

“Did you say something?” Jesse asked, turning around.

An indecipherable mutter escaped my lips as I bent for my glove. I tried as hard as I could NOT to look at Colton Holden or his hotness.

Jesse eyed me and then shrugged it off and strode forward.

No. Not there. Anywhere but there.

Didn’t he say I’d be painting? From the look of things, this room was already painted!

Yet, wouldn’t you know it, he led me right to the largest part of the room. Right to where Colton Holden rivaled the sun. He was blazing, hard to miss, and looking at him directly was going to burn me to a crisp.

“Hey, Colt,” Jesse said, gripping one of the uninstalled cupboard doors with his gloved hand. “Got your newest recruit here. This is Natalie.”

My back went up. What did he mean Colton’s newest recruit?

He hadn’t been here when I’d started yesterday. What was he doing here now?

This was a nightmare. A living, breathing nightmare.

I was back in the animal feed aisle all over again. I wanted to retreat. I wanted to say, “Never mind. Forget it. I’m not qualified.”

Which would, then, only prove every man on this job who’d judged me for being female right.

I lifted my chin as Colton lowered the lime green level to his side, swiped at his cheek with his wrist, and flashed a smile at me.

“Hey, there, Miss Natalie. You never said this was your new job.”

“You never asked.”

I’d said construction . There were plenty of construction sites in the Cassia County area .

“You two know each other?” Jesse said. He clapped his hands together. “Good. I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“You’re the foreman here,” Colton said, pointing a finger at Jesse. “Get back and do your job.”

Jesse laughed. “I do my job all right, unless you’re on site, boss. She’s all yours.”

“I resent that,” I muttered.

Colton and Jesse both laughed as Jesse turned and stalked back around the way we’d come. Colton rested the cupboard door against the side of the wood and dusted his hands.

“Are you stalking me?” I asked.

He smirked, which only bothered me that much more. This wasn’t smirk-at-able. Why did he act amused by everything I said?

“Now, why would I want to do that?” he said.

“You tell me. First, you’re at C-A-L Ranch. Now, I mentioned I was starting a new job doing construction, and you just happen to be on site, too?”

“Yeah, when it’s my project, I am.”

“What do you mean, your project?” I thought he farmed!

Colton tipped his foot against the side of the wood he’d be installing. “I mean, this is my job site. Bryce and I are spearheading these townhouses.”

He cast his gaze across the freestanding cabinets with pride only a business owner could display.

The bitterness I used to feel whenever I heard Bryce Holden’s name was only a simmer rather than a boil. But just because I’d forgiven him and moved on from the betrayal I’d felt when we’d dated three years ago—when he’d kissed my sister —that didn’t mean I was okay with working for him.

Or for Colton.

Disappointment sank in hard and fast. I could find a job somewhere else. Anywhere else.

But I was excited to work here, dang it.

Maybe it was time to put my plan into action early. I had enough money. What was keeping me from leaving now?

I mean, really?

The answers presented themselves the same way they’d done every other time I’d asked myself this question: I’d just signed a six-month lease with the Eriksons. I was saving a bit more money before I took that dive. And I wasn’t good at impulsive.

I needed time to convince myself I was brave.

“Not to sound rude, but why are you here? You have all these other people here to build things. I thought you had your farm.”

He stepped toward me, straining the air—or maybe just dissolving my ability to breathe it in.

A gleam of sweat built around his hairline and glistened on his arms. He clutched the level to his side with one gloved hand, and the glint in his eyes was so playful my stomach did a little flip.

“The fields are all planted, and Bryce needed some help, so I told him I’d come. Besides, I like to use my hands,” he said in a low tone.

Yeah, I’d bet he did. He liked to use them for catching things like rabbits and women who threw themselves at him to avoid stepping on said rabbits.

Colton lifted his chin. “I like to be on site when I can and contribute how I can. Now, why don’t you stop gaping at me and get to work?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Are you going to deny it?”

“Deny what?”

“That you can’t take your eyes off me.”

My teeth clamped shut. Was he right?

I had lost complete track of all reality the minute his arms had swept around me yesterday, so much so that I’d missed the fact that anyone else existed until the associate came into view.

Who was I kidding? I was gaping at him.

Bryce was gorgeous in so many ways it wasn’t funny. He had a brooding look about him, dark hair, and mesmerizing eyes that had always had a hypnotic effect on me.

With Bryce around, I’d never looked twice at his younger brothers.

Standing here with Colton now, though, I noticed far too much about him. His impressive build, his angled jawline, his bemused expression. Something told me he was more lighthearted than Bryce—a fact that I liked.

A fact I didn’t want to like because I was not interested in any Holden boy. Or any man for that matter.

EVER. AGAIN.

I folded my arms. “How can I get to work when you haven’t told me what I should be doing?”

“I haven’t, have I?” This time the smile was only in his eyes. He scraped his hand against his chin.

“What’ve you got?” he asked.

My back went up. “What do you mean?”

“Skills, Nat.”

“Don’t call me that.” We weren’t close enough to one another to start using nicknames. It was almost as bad that he kept calling me Miss Natalie like he’d done after Belle and Luke’s wedding.

Colton lifted his arms. “My bad. What can you do? Electrical? Site Coordinator? Apprentice? General laborer?”

“That one,” I said. “I don’t know much about anything else. I’m here to learn, to labor. You know. Assist.”

Ugh.

“Jesse said I’d be painting,” I finished lamely.

“All right, then, Miss Natalie. Jesse’s the foreman. He knows more of what’s going on here than I do. In that case, follow your nose up the stairs. You’ll find Jo painting the bedrooms.”

“Got it,” I said. I was more than relieved to leave him behind.

The townhouse’s layout was what you’d typically expect from something like these. The stairs went up one way, stopping on a landing that overlooked the high-ceilinged living room area below, and then turned again to where a pair of bedrooms branched off the upper landing.

I followed the sound of voices—or rather, one voice—and found a woman standing in the second bedroom just down from the master. Her brown hair had blonde highlights and was pulled back in a ponytail, and she hummed softly under her breath.

“Hey,” she said, lowering her paint roller and strolling toward me across the wooden floor. “I’m Jo.”

“Natalie,” I said.

I knew who she was only because Bridgewater was so small. Josephine Scott had gone by Jo for as long as I’d known her. She was six or seven years younger than I was—and had grown up fast. The last time I remembered seeing Jo Scott was during the Harvest Festival—but she was at least a foot shorter and hanging around with her sisters.

Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs, and then Bryce Holden popped his head into the room. It was stupid, but my defenses hissed like threatened cats.

“Hey,” he said. “I heard there was someone new. I make it a point to know who’s working on my crew. I didn’t realize you’d started, Nat.”

“Yep, I’m here,” I said, bristling at the nickname. He’d called me that when we’d dated, too. But I didn’t correct him, and I couldn’t figure out why.

He was no longer a threat to me, for one thing. That, and the air between us had a tinge of too much niceness, the way people who’d just gotten in a terrible argument the day before and were forced to be in the same room with one another so soon after had.

It wasn’t that I was still upset with him for what had happened. It was more of I didn’t know how to act around him even after all this time had passed.

“I’m glad,” Bryce said, taking my hand and shaking it. “And your name?” he said, turning to Jo.

Smiling, gazing at him the way most women did, she brushed a hand across her face and inadvertently smeared a streak of cream paint on her skin.

“Jo Scott,” she said.

“Scott? As in John Scott?”

Her smile slipped only a fraction. “That’s the one. That’s my dad.”

Was something wrong with her dad? If so, Bryce didn’t seem to notice the change in her countenance at the mention of his name.

Bryce tucked a hand into his pocket. “I’d have thought you’d be working on your dad’s crew,” he said.

“Not this year,” Jo said, flipping her hair back and letting her eyes sweep down Bryce’s body and back up again.

Was she intentionally trying to flirt, or was that just the way she was? She wasn’t desperate or overly confident like Emily. Jo was sweet, and something told me she just acted in a way that drew men to her like flies to a picnic.

“This’ll give you some different experience,” Bryce said, either not noticing Jo’s interest or not caring. He was engaged to Allie Vreeland, after all. Maybe Jo didn’t know.

“See you two later.”

“Bye,” she said, waving to him, and then she grinned at me once we were alone again. “I wish ‘experience’ is why I was doing this.”

“Then why are you?” I asked.

She certainly hadn’t dressed for the strain of working with wood and hammers and things. She wore leggings and, yep, steel-toe work boots like mine. They weren’t the most comfortable things, for the record. My feet ached, not liking the lack of support they gave.

Jo scoffed and bent to run her roller in the tray of paint. “Ugh, I’d rather be anywhere than working on my dad’s crew. He’s so overbearing. He freaks out when any of the guys even talk to me.”

“I can see how that would be a problem,” I said, picturing the swarm of men she probably got anywhere she went. “But why does your dad care? How old are you?”

“I just turned eighteen.” Her eyes lit up, and her entire face responded with delight. She was one of those girls who just glowed. Who looked put together no matter what she wore. Jo Scott would probably look good in a paper sack.

She ran her roller over the wall, smearing paint into place with a little too much vigor. More paint splattered on her cheek.

“I’m officially an adult. You’d think my dad would get the hint—but I’m not like my sister. I’m not going to sleep around and get pregnant, you know?”

“Which sister?” I asked. While Ivy and I had been friends, we didn’t keep in touch. If she’d gotten pregnant, it was news to me.

“Camille is pregnant. Dad and Mom are trying to convince her and her boyfriend to get married. I’m not going to fool around like that, you know? I just wanted some freedom to be myself. I just needed a short-term job before I go to school.”

“When is that?” I asked, running my roller over the paint excess Jo hadn’t gotten to.

“I’m going to ISU this fall,” she said.

That was something I’d never done. I’d wanted to go to school—but Dad had needed me at the post office. He’d just had surgery, and Mom hadn’t been able to handle the demands of the post office on her own.

So I’d stayed.

If Jo was going to school? I was all in favor to say aye.

Not that my vote mattered, but she was taking her life by the horns with both hands, and I’d encourage her to keep going—the way I wished someone had done for me.

“What are you majoring in?” I asked.

“Physical education. Or something to do with fitness. I haven’t decided yet.”

“That’s great.”

The two of us remained silent as we painted. Dipped and rolled. Dipped and rolled. Soon, the wall we’d started on was done—all except for the edges. But from what Jo said, we’d come back to finish that later.

“What about you?” she asked. “Did you get a degree?”

“No,” I said. “I never really took that chance.”

“Do you want to?” Jo asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, my determination faltering.

Attending school had crossed my mind. I was intent to do something with my life, but my problem was, I didn’t know what. Traveling had been all I’d ever wanted. But that required money, so I guess that meant finding an occupation.

I’d just gotten this job. I didn’t want to have to find a new one so soon, but I wasn’t sure construction was what I’d do for the rest of my life.

Leaving town was becoming more and more appealing by the minute, but I couldn’t tell what was stopping me. Was venturing off into the unknown really that scary?