Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

18. Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

L aura

Despite all the things I would rather be doing, I stalk Lucretia Borgia around the paddock with a bright orange halter hanging over my shoulder. I’m already half a bag of carrots down, and I am absolutely no closer to catching this stubborn girl.

The sky grumbles. It’s an ominous gray-black color, and the wind is doing that peculiar spring storm mixture of being completely sticky-still and then whipping into a frenzy.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “Hail’s coming,” I sing in as sweet a voice as I can muster. Unfortunately, although she let my singing get a halter on her at Joel Hostetler’s, my cracked soprano has ceased to work. Now Cree thinks absolutely nothing of Ma’s favorite songs.

Still. The storm is coming and there’s no way she can weather it out in this paddock. I’ve already gotten the three pigs into the barn, and Einstein curls uselessly just inside the door, watching me with barely concealed amusement.

“Walk on, Cree,” I say, breathing deeply to keep my energy neutral. Futility is chasing a naughty donkey. Lucretia Borgia looks up at me, her dark brown eyes untrusting and wary, her tail tucked behind her butt. Sure, she’s fed here at my place, but otherwise she won’t let me do anything else. She needs a bath and a brush, but I can’t do either of those things if she’ll barely let me approach her. I wish Davey were here. Cree would at least look at him. “Whoa, girlfriend. Whoa.”

Cree snorts and growls. There I go again, angering the little donkey. Great going, Laura.

There are so many other things on my plate. I have to make sure the generator has gas in the likely event the power goes out. I have to check through my social media posts after the last decorating video I published and respond to comments. I have to wash my own fricking hair.

Cree glances once at the carrot in my hand then promptly goes back to ignoring me.

Great.

It isn’t like she’s never done this. I can recall at least two separate occasions where she let me halter her. It was after an excessive amount of carrots and cajoling, but still. It happened. I didn’t dream it.

A beat-up truck rumbles into my driveway, and a wave of relief flows through me. Perfect. Cree and I both need a break from this pointless dance that’s going absolutely nowhere.

I climb over the paddock fence and land on the soft grass.

Jesse steps out of the cab, and a traitorous part of my stomach swoons like a twirling ballerina. No man who isn’t a lumberjack or a male model should look that good in a T-shirt. He trimmed his beard so it softens the line of his jaw. The weeks of labor fixing up his cabin have sharpened his muscles into groan-worthy curves.

Or maybe it’s just been a while for me and I’m dealing now with not one, but two, stubborn asses.

“Hi, Laura.” He sticks his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, stretching the fabric of his T-shirt across his chest.

“Hi. What’s up?” Way to go, Laura. I sound almost casual. Is he here because he’s heard the rumor I accidentally started about the two of us dating? At work today, at least two people per hour mentioned it. Trust Chris to be a gigantic toddler blabbermouth. My heart flip-flops several times like it’s auditioning for the Olympics gymnastic team.

In the textbook definition of a nervous gesture, he runs one hand through his sheaf of brown-and-gray-speckled hair, then points a thumb at the back of his truck. “I have some gas for your generator. They said at the store that it’s going to be a bad one. I thought I saw that you have a gennie, and I was already getting some gas for myself.” He shakes his head.

His entire monologue does very serious things to my composure. What is it about a slightly awkward super-hot guy?

“That’s not true. I don’t have a generator at my cabin. I don’t even have hot water. Do you know how hard it is to get paint out of your hair when you don’t have hot water? Never mind. You don’t need to answer that.” He exhales loudly and stares at the grass at his feet. “This is probably weird. I’m sorry.”

It’s the most I’ve ever heard him say. Feeling like the last half hour cornering Lucretia Borgia has been a terrible dream, I step toward Jesse. “Thank you. I could definitely use some gas. Is it in the back of your truck?”

“Yes.” His shoulders lighten and he grins briefly before covering it by turning toward the truck. “I’ll get it out for you.”

Overhead, thunder cracks, loud and shocking. Jesse and I look up simultaneously, then I catch his gaze and we both start laughing.

“I take it you don’t shy away from storms,” Jesse says, opening the back door of his truck and pulling out the propane canisters.

“I couldn’t. Whenever there was a big storm growing up, all the kids gathered in my room. We’d play card games, and Frannie would try to scare us all with camp stories.” I take one of the tanks from him and walk toward the covered shelter where the generator waits.

“Really?” He places the second canister beside the first. He’s almost too close to me, and I remember how it felt when I ran into him on Mom’s porch yesterday. Hard, pine-smelling man. Yum. “Having met your mom, I would have thought she’d be the whole comfort type.”

“She is, definitely. And Ma was too. But they both worked all hours. Mom’s a nurse, and Ma was a 911 dispatcher before she got sick. When they couldn’t be there, I could.” I cross my arms over my chest, staring up at the swirling black clouds overhead. This storm is going to be a killer.

Jesse follows my gaze. “Are all the animals in the barn?”

There is not a large enough eye roll in the world. “All except Lucretia Borgia. She won’t even let me near her. Darn stubborn animal.”

His gaze on my donkey, he runs a hand through his hair again. What would that hair feel like between my fingers? Silky and strong, probably, perfect for tugging when—

Nope. A blush flares up my neck. I’m not going there. No matter what Opal Larson implied when she stopped by for her grilled cheese and tomato soup. She’d used some very colorful language, too.

Maybe I should read more gargoyle shifter erotica.

“Can I try?” he asks, his gaze still on the paddock.

“You want to try to halter her imperial majesty? Be my guest.”

Hah. Like Jesse, newbie DIY guy and hardware store employee, knows anything about haltering donkeys.

I busy myself around the barnyard, picking up and securing whatever I can find that needed tying down before the storm wreaks its havoc.

When I glance over at the paddock ten minutes later, my heart leaps. Not only is Einstein curled at Jesse’s feet, but Lucretia Borgia is letting him stroke her haunches. He rubs and massages her sides, and the little hussy huffs in pleasure. With a well-practiced motion, Jesse doesn’t stop rubbing her with one hand while he drapes the end of the lead rope across her back. The donkey doesn’t even blink, not even when Jesse swipes the halter up and over her muzzle a few moments later.

“Got her,” he calls to me, a bright smile splitting his face. My ovaries are magnets, drawing me toward him, but I tell them to hush. “I’ll lead her into the barn.” Lucretia Borgia follows him like he’s the Pied Piper of stubborn donkeys.

The pull deep inside me won’t relent, so I ride it, and follow him toward the barn door. If I lean against the jamb, it won’t look like I’m desperate to have those very same hands all over me. It’s a good thing the power is going to go out. The darkness can hold all of the filthy fantasies I’m going to play out alone in my head tonight.

He leads Cree into a stall and closes the door, petting her muzzle and then removing the halter. “Is there anything else you need help with?”

“Don’t think for a second that I like you better because you charmed my ass,” I say. I don’t know where that sass comes from, but I like it. I thought Chris had bored it all out of me, but no, there’s Sassy New Laura, waiting to come out to play.

His gaze flicks toward me before he kneels beside Einstein. “Maybe she wasn’t the ass I wanted to charm,” he says, almost too softly to hear, but the barn has surprisingly excellent acoustics.

Zinging hot alarm bells of desire rocket through me. Me? Does he mean me? He might have, and dear holy sweet goddesses, I—

I need to shut this down. “So you’re harboring a whole stable of donkeys at your rundown cabin? That sounds like an animal welfare problem. I should call my brother.”

Rising to his feet, Jesse shrugs. “I mean no one any harm.”

I suspect he means that. There is a gentleness to him, now that he isn’t trying so hard to be obstinate and contrary.

Outside the barn, the skies open in a waterfall of rain. Since I’m standing in the doorway, water splashes all over me, and I leap into the warmth of the barn, away from the deluge. “They weren’t wrong about this storm.”

Jesse dashes past me and pulls the barn doors closed, cocooning us with the animals and the scent of fresh alfalfa bales and sawdust. It’s far too intimate a setting, even as Einstein walks over and curls on top of Jesse’s feet. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” I wrap my arms around myself, shivering. “It’s just water. I have an umbrella somewhere in the old tack room. I’ll give the weather a moment, and then we can go to the house. I owe you coffee at least.”

“I can’t drink coffee this late in the day. It gives me reflux.” He says it while staring up at the roof of the barn, as if wondering if that will hold us. “Do you have a space heater? I don’t want you to catch a chill or anything.”

Yup, ovary magnet activated. It isn’t even a regular old magnet, but an electromagnet, pulsing deep in my belly. “I’ll be all right.”

He glances over at me, his storm-cloud-gray eyes filled with concern. “I know you can take care of yourself, Laura. I just—I worry about you sometimes. I like helping you. I hope that’s all right.”

Giant klaxons ring throughout my body. If I don’t shut this down in the next few moments, I’m going to jump all over him, and then where will that leave me? Heartbroken and alone. Again.

“The rain’s letting up.” I brush past him on my way to the tack room and ignore the thrill of pleasure that rushes through me at the small touch. “We should get to the house while we can.”

“Right.”

He doesn’t follow me into the tack room, which I appreciate. There is an old wooden tack box there that would be excellent for—

Things that I’m not thinking about.

I find the umbrella without too much trouble, since it’s exactly where I left it. Good thing about being a control freak, no matter what my exes say.

I exit the tack room to see Jesse standing by the pigs while Lucretia Borgia and Einstein bask in his presence. He’s singing to them, actually singing to my pigs. Be still my heart.

At least until I hear the song is “Humpty Dumpty.”

“I have the umbrella,” I tell him, and that surprised smile when he turns and sees me? Double swoon with a cherry and whipped cream on top. “Let’s make a run for it.”