Page 35 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

We continue the process until Miller’s hay stacks are too low for him to throw them over the fence.

“That’s enough.” I knock hay dust off my hands. “These ten bales will keep us going until Barry can bring the rest over. I’ll write a note and shove it through the front door to tell them what we took so they don’t think there are a bunch of hay-stealing bandits around.”

Miller grabs his jacket, puts it back on, climbs up the remaining bales, then swings himself over the top of the fence exactly as he did earlier.

This time, he doesn’t climb down the outside, he jumps from what I consider to be a dangerous height and makes a solid, unwavering landing about two feet away from me, causing the ground under my feet to vibrate for a fraction of a second.

My heart vibrates with it.

And my belly.

And my hands.

Seriously, I could quite happily just stand here and look at him for the next couple of hours. He is so attractive he’s almost a parody of attractive. And he also just saved the day with the donkeys’ dinner, which ratchets up his attractiveness quotient exponentially.

I’m snapped back to reality when he removes his gloves, shoves them into his pockets and dusts his hands together.

“All right,” he says, like it’s a job well done. “Let’s go feed some donkeys.”

There’s that swaggery smile again.

And, yup. There are my nipples.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MILLER

Liberating the hay from the farm seems to have gone well. Frankie was in a great mood all the way home. She seemed more relaxed, happier. Maybe even more at ease with me.

And now as we move the bales from the truck to the barn, she laughs at how much she’s struggling.

“I’m so pathetic.” She giggles as I pass her in the opposite direction, heading back to the truck to grab another one. “I could never have done this on my own. The donkeys would have gone hungry while I waited for the delivery.”

“You’d have found a way.” And it’s true. She seems nothing if not resourceful.

She grunts as I return with another and re-enter the barn to find her struggling to shove her bale on top of the stack.

“Just start a new pile,” I advise.

But no, with the stubbornness of a mule, she persists intrying to get it up there, jumping to give it repeated shoves.

She probably can’t see how precarious it is from her angle, and that it could easily fall on her head.

Fuck. It’s teetering now.

“Move!” I shout.

But she just turns her attention to me, puzzled. “What?”

I drop my bale and hustle to push her aside.

But her foot catches on the bale behind her and she stumbles backward, taking me with her.

She lands on her back on the hay with me on top of her, right as the bale she was trying to stack falls with a heavywhooshand lands so close behind me that it brushes my feet.

“Whoa,” she says, her bright blue eyes locking with mine.

I swear to God I can feel her heart beating against mine. Or is that just mine thumping against my own ribs?