Font Size
Line Height

Page 21 of Small Town Hero

B irdie woke up with the sunrise, which was unusual for her.

Unless she had something to do. But as soon as her eyes snapped open, she remembered.

And she found herself tumbling out of bed.

Which made the bottom of her foot brush against the back of her knee, and she yelped and started to brush at the hay still on the bottom of her socks.

How had she fallen asleep with these on?

She took them off, then ripped the covers back and brushed all the grit out of the bedding. She hated that. She hated it so much. It was so gross.

She could live rough, honestly. She had done it when necessary, but she liked all of her things to be clean. And definitely not texturally problematic.

She wished she had a change of clothes. She shook her socks out ruthlessly, then put them back on and decided to get dressed and go in search of Gunnar.

Alternatively, she could flee.

Yes. She could do that. She could run away and hope that he didn’t call the police on her.

She could bank on the fact that he probably wouldn’t want to bother.

As long as she didn’t steal his horse. But she would be stuck without a job.

Because she still wouldn’t have a horse, so she couldn’t work the cattle drive.

She decided she was going to the house. Going to . . . follow this through? If he actually paid her . . . If she ended up with a horse. Of course, once she finished working for Gunnar, she wasn’t going to have anywhere to stay. Nowhere to keep the horse.

You’ll find other work. You’ll find a place to go. You always do.

That was true. She had a way of taking tribulations and turning them into triumphs, and she would do it again.

So she got dressed and headed down to his house, hoping there would be food and coffee, but suspecting it was a vain hope. No matter. She was very good at ignoring being hungry. She had gotten used to it.

She could not get used to hay in her socks, though.

Maybe he would let her borrow a pair. She needed to wash hers. And she needed to get all her supplies.

She stomped up the front steps, then debated between ringing the doorbell and knocking. Ringing the doorbell seemed very noisy. She was trying to decide how intrusive to be when the door jerked open.

“How long are you going to loiter out here?”

She blinked and looked up. He was shirtless.

His chest was broad and muscular, with a smattering of golden hair over his pectoral muscles and down his washboard abs.

Well. He was hot. Not that she didn’t know that.

He was handsome, in a very perfectly formed symmetrical sort of way.

If you liked disapproving, icy blue eyes that looked like they could cause an avalanche, square jaws and things like that.

Just if you happened to.

What she hadn’t realized was that he was hot. Like, hot hot. Like, burn your good intentions to the ground hot.

She had never actually met a man who was that hot.

She only met men who were conveniently hot. Like, secure a room for a couple of weeks and a few meals hot. It wasn’t the same.

One was a nice companion piece to getting what you needed. The other was potentially destructive. Very little good could come of it.

At least, in her opinion.

So she decided to ignore his hotness. Difficult to do, because he was so tall, the center of his chest was actually right in her line of sight.

“I’m not loitering. I was trying to decide whether to knock or ring the doorbell. I was trying to not be rude, actually. Because I care about such things.”

“I’m sure you do. Come on in.”

She could smell bacon, and coffee.

She blinked, as if she was fighting pressure against the back of her eyes, but she couldn’t say why. “Can I borrow some socks?”

“What?” He looked at her as though she had grown a second head.

“Socks. Mine are dirty.”

“Why don’t we go grab your bag before we start work? But sure. I’ll go get a pair of socks—they’re going to be huge on you, though.”

“That’s okay.”

He returned a moment later with socks in a bundle, and she took her boots off enthusiastically, and changed her socks. Then she went back out onto the front porch and made sure that her boots didn’t have any remaining hay inside.

When she came back in, she didn’t see him. She walked through the entryway and into the kitchen, where he was standing, loading up a plate. “Here,” he said, shoving it at her.

She clamped her fingers around the edge, like claws. “Oh?”

“How do you take your coffee?”

“I . . . You’re feeding me?”

“I’m not going to have you dying of starvation out in the middle of the field today. A full day’s work requires a full stomach.”

“Oh,” she said again.

“You can sit at the kitchen island, there. I don’t really have a dining table.”

“Oh. Sure.”

She sat at the island, plate in front of her, and her stomach growled viciously.

She hadn’t had any dinner last night. She dug into the eggs enthusiastically.

“Birdie,” he said. “Coffee?”

“I don’t care how you fix it. I like it anyway I can get it.”

“Come on now, you have to have a preference.”

“I don’t know. How do you drink it?”

“I usually put in a little bit of half-and-half and a spoonful of sugar.”

“Really? You seem like the kind of guy who would drink it black and growl about how tough you are.”

“Nah, Birdie, I’ll let you in on a little secret. If a man ever has to tell you how tough he is, he’s not. And especially if he has to tell you he’s tough because he has a drink a certain way.”

She huffed a laugh. “Okay. You can fix mine the way you do yours.”

That was usually what she did. If she was bunking down with a guy, she let him choose how to make coffee. Seemed reasonable. Sometimes it was black, sometimes just cream. Sometimes overly sweet. Sometimes not sweet enough. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, or something like that.

“All right.”

He poured a generous amount of coffee into a mug, then some cream and sugar. He passed it to her, and she took a sip. It was a little bit too light and too sweet for her, but it didn’t matter. It was going to do the job. And she was pleased.

Before she fully emptied her plate, he piled more bacon and more eggs onto it, and she ate every last bite. She sat there for a moment, nearly humming with pleasure.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this full. It was wonderful.

“Another coffee for the road?” She looked up at him and was nearly surprised that he was the same Gunnar Parsons who had railroaded her last night. Surprised he was the same Gunnar Parsons she had known all her life—inflexible, morally superior, and a general pain in the ass.

He was being so . . . almost nice. Except, he was forcing her to work on his ranch.

She was having a hard time finding any animosity toward him, though.

“Sure,” she said.

He poured some coffee into a to-go cup, and then she followed him out the front door to his truck.

“You’re staying on the family ranch?”

“Yeah. But if I were you, I would drive in as near as you can to the back, and then let me walk across the field to the barn where my stuff is. I don’t want to see my dad, and I’m sure you don’t either.”

“I’m not scared of your dad.”

Birdie huffed. “I’m not scared of him. My God. He’s probably drunk off his ass, if he’s up. More than likely he’s passed out. I just don’t want to deal with him.”

“All right.”

He followed her directions and drove to the edge of the property. “If I’m not back in five minutes . . . Well, don’t call the cops.”

“I’m going with you,” he said, turning the engine off and getting out of the truck.

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I’m going to come with you, Birdie. So stop making an issue. Let’s just go get your stuff.”

She hissed and complained the whole way across the field, about the weeds, which thankfully were not in her socks, and about his presence.

Because it was unnecessary. She really didn’t understand why he was doing all this.

From feeding her to making sure she had backup for the trip to the barn. Not that she needed it.

“I sneak in this way,” she said, wiggling a board out of its place and slipping through.

“God Almighty,” he muttered as he squeezed in behind her, working much harder than she had to get his muscular frame through the opening.

She hurried over to the corner, grabbed her backpack and her rolled-up sleeping bag. She’d made sure all of her things were packed and ready to go before she’d headed out to Gunnar’s last night. It just made sense to always be ready to run.

“This is all I have,” she said.

He looked at the bag, at the sleeping bag, then back at her. She wished he was disdainful. She wished he was looking at her the way he had last night. Because thinking she was beneath him was one thing; looking at her with pity was quite another.

She never liked it. Not if the person was a middle-aged church lady, or a purple-haired activist. But she especially didn’t like it from an extremely good-looking man.

“I like to travel light,” she said. “Now let’s get out of here.” She led the way, slipping back through the opening and making sure to comment on the fact that she hadn’t needed him to go with her.

Right then, he grabbed the back of her backpack and pulled it off her.

“Maybe you didn’t need me.”

As the straps of the backpack dragged down over her arms, she was forced to drop her sleeping bag. “That wasn’t helpful,” she said, picking it up and brushing it off. “Now there’s probably stuff stuck to it. I hate that.”

“Well, you don’t need it right at this moment.”

“It’s the only sleeping bag I have,” she said. “And I will need it at some point. I’m not staying up in a room in your barn forever.”

“Point taken.” He took the sleeping bag out of her arms. “I’m just going to carry your things. Maybe you didn’t need me. Sorry I made you drop your sleeping bag. I just thought I would help.”