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Page 25 of Small Town Hero

S he’d had a full week’s work with Gunnar Parsons, and it had been . . . way nicer than she would like to admit. He always fed her. He said it was part of her pay. She thought it was above and beyond. And during those meals, she always learned a little bit more about him. He was . . . fascinating.

He was gorgeous and handsome and hot, and in some ways seemed too good to be true. As if he was made up by a woman, or something. Except he was thirty years old and hadn’t had a long-term relationship of any kind. Not that she had, but she didn’t present as emotionally well-adjusted.

It made her wonder if there was something a little bit wrong with him.

But if so, she hadn’t seen it.

She showed up at the house that morning bright and early at seven o’clock, and she didn’t even bother to knock, because he just expected her at this point. When she walked in, he was standing at the island, with four cups of coffee in front of him.

“What’s that?”

“I have here four completely unadulterated cups of coffee. I want you to fix your own coffee, do some taste tests and decide what you like.”

“What?”

“I noticed that you drink what I drink, but I’m not convinced that’s what you like.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” she said.

It was kind of true. Though she could honestly say that now Gunnar Coffee was always going to be a little bit sentimental for her because she was enjoying her time working with him.

A lot. More than she wanted to admit.

“Is it dumb? Because you don’t seem to like it very much. You just take what I take. And the last couple of days I’ve messed with it, and you haven’t said anything.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I thought you were honest.”

“I’m flexible on certain things. And I was just curious.”

“Oh. Well.”

“I want you to figure out what you like. You don’t have to drink charity coffee. You are a full-fledged member of this household. Part of my team. And it matters what you want.”

Her heart thundered painfully in her chest. The things he said made her feel . . . Well, she didn’t want to think about what they made her feel. She had no business feeling that way. She . . .

She couldn’t go catching feelings for this man.

This man who had lived next door to her basically all her life and had always disdained her on some level or another. She couldn’t catch feelings for him. It would just be silly.

She had never felt . . .

She cleared her throat. “Okay. If I do that, will you lay off?”

“Maybe.”

She made a hissing sound, just to put him off balance, then walked over to the counter. There was a sugar bowl, a pitcher of cream, some milk, and some vanilla flavoring, which she opened and sniffed delicately.

“Well, I don’t know where to start.”

“Why don’t you taste it plain?”

She picked up the cup and sipped it gingerly. She made a face. “No. Not plain. Please.”

He chuckled. Then he handed her the sugar bowl. She took a spoon, and measured carefully, then put a little bit of cream on top of that. She stirred it around and tasted it. It was okay. Not terrible.

But a little bit too sweet.

She went to the next cup, put in just a little bit less sugar, added just a little bit less cream.

She tasted it and added a bit more of each. But then it was too much.

She made a scoffing sound.

“Try the third one.”

She did, and this time she managed to get it just right. A little bit less sugar than he used, a little bit more cream. But not as much she had done on cup number two.

“Perfect,” she said.

“Well there. Now you know just how you like your coffee. And you don’t need to drink it the way I drink it. You can drink it the way you want.”

“Well, I guess so,” she said.

She couldn’t understand, not for the life of her, why he had done this for her. Why he had taken the time out of his day for her?

And he had thought of it while she wasn’t even here. He had done this for her without her asking. He had thought of her when she wasn’t in the room.

She thought about Gunnar quite a bit at this point, sometimes even when she was in the shower, but to know that he thought about her when she wasn’t there . . . That was something else.

“Thank you,” she said. “For doing that for me.” Because it wasn’t going to kill her to be nice. Nobody had ever taught her that. One time, a teacher at school had told her that it didn’t cost anything to be kind. She’d told her dad, and he’d said it didn’t cost anything to be mean either.

That had stuck with her, and she supposed it wasn’t a great thing that it was her father’s lesson that she had internalized.

Maybe it was inevitable. The sins of the father, etc., etc.

No one ever said daughters inherited those things, but times had changed. Girls could inherit things now.

“Yeah. Well. You’ve been doing good work around here.”

“I’m glad you think so. I mean, I’m glad I’m not dead weight.”

“Actually, I have to go to town today and get some supplies at the Farm and Garden. Would you like to come?”

“Would you invite just any ranch hand?”

She didn’t know why she suddenly felt so desperate to feel special. Except that it would be very nice to be special to somebody like Gunnar.

Just thinking about it made her feel warm. She shouldn’t be thinking things like that.

Speaking of things she couldn’t afford. The love of a good man was definitely one of them.

She felt her shoulders rise up an inch. Who was talking about love anyway? Certainly not her. She was attracted to him, sure. But who wouldn’t be? Honestly, who wouldn’t be. He was an incredibly handsome man. Well over six feet, broad shouldered, muscular, and he was just so . . .

He was nice, but she didn’t have the feeling that it came naturally to him.

It was more that there was a goodness deep inside him, and he acted on that goodness even when it was difficult. He wasn’t saccharine, he wasn’t sweet, he was something even better.

She thought of what he’d said about the ecosystem. About his father being a mountain.

She thought that Gunnar might be a mountain. It suited him. He was strong. As if he was propping up everything around him. He had said that his dad was a mountain, and he had died from not having what he needed, but what did a mountain need?

She wanted to know. Because she sort of wanted to give it to him. Oh, not like that. She didn’t think she had the power to prop up Gunnar Parsons’ personal ecosystem. Far from it. He had done so many nice things for her.

“Yeah. Let’s go to town.”

Which was how she found herself riding shotgun next to Gunnar without really considering whether or not people in town would find it odd that the two of them were together.

Thankfully, she wasn’t exactly a regular at the Farm and Garden store, so it wasn’t populated with people she knew by sight.

“We might be the talk of the town if the wrong person runs into us,” she pointed out.

“I’ve never been the talk of the town in my life,” he said.

“Yes, that’s because you don’t hang out with baddies,” she said, bringing her hands up and making claws with her fingers.

“Is that what you are?”

“According to some. Though some might say that I’m a baddie as in a villain, and some would say I’m a baddie as in very hot.

” She batted her eyes and him, and he stared at her for a moment.

Just a moment longer than he normally would, and his eyes looked just a little bit harder.

And she wondered, at least for a second, if he thought she was pretty.

No. He was too good for something like that. Too good for her.

She had to be imagining things because . . .

This was the problem. If somebody made you feel special, then you just wanted to keep feeling special. She wasn’t special. She was just her. Kind of a no-account born to somebody destined to be forgotten by history.

Definitely not the kind of person Gunnar would ever . . . make eyes at, or anything remotely like that.

She scurried behind him as he went inside the Farm and Garden, not really commenting on what she had said. That was fine. She didn’t need him to agree or disagree.

He grabbed a flat cart and picked up a new hose, a roll of barbed wire and some new tools.

She saw a bright pink pair of work gloves and looked at them for a moment but didn’t linger on them long.

He hadn’t paid her yet, but she hadn’t really needed any money.

And she didn’t want to ask him, because he was being overly accommodating.

Besides, even if she did have some money, she wouldn’t spend it on something like that. It was too frivolous.

“Add the gloves to the cart,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What?”

“You heard me. You want them.”

“I barely looked at them. How did you even . . .”

“I pay attention to you.”

She had nothing to say to that. She just got the gloves and put them on the cart. She didn’t know what to say at all, not for the whole rest of the shopping trip. He paid attention to her? What did that even mean?