Luke Page 3

  I bristle at his words. "I don't even know what part of that statement is more insulting."

  "What do you mean?" he asks. "I said I'd concede that you're good-looking."

  "That's very generous of you."

  "Why did you show up at my place, anyway?"

  "I can't, for the life of me, think what in the hell possessed me to come out here," I say, putting the car in drive.

  He stands up and grins at me again. "I've heard your memory goes when you get older," he says.

  I press the gas pedal and pull out around him, kicking up a cloud of dust on the dirt road as I drive away. When I glance in the rear view mirror, he's laughing and shaking his head as he stands there watching me.

  What an irritating, arrogant prick. I'll just have to find a foreman the old-fashioned way.

  By the afternoon, I'm grumpy and no closer to finding a foreman than I was in the morning. One of the orchard workers I trust says he has a cousin -- twice removed or something – a couple of towns over who might be a good fit, but other than that, I'm coming up blank.

  And, I realize as I hear Olivia beginning her end-of-nap cry in the next room, now I've just run out of naptime too.

  "Hey baby doll, how was your nap?" I chatter to her as we go downstairs and I make her a snack while she tries unsuccessfully to open every cabinet door in the kitchen she can reach. I set down a pan of uncooked rice and beans and some measuring cups in the middle of the floor for her to play with, while I take ingredients for dinner out of the fridge.

  When the doorbell rings, I scoop Olivia up before she can protest, and yank it open, expecting one of the guys working out in the orchard. But it's not. "You."

  "Aw, now, you're not the least bit pleased to see me?" Luke Saint gives me that half-grin, the one I bet drives all the women his age wild.

  "What do you want?" I ask. "Look, I have a pot of water boiling in the stove, so you need to walk and talk." I don't wait for him, but he follows me to the kitchen, where I set Olivia back down to play with her cups and rice.

  "I thought you were busy today," he says. "With all your things to do, like wash your hair."

  My hand immediately goes to my head. "I did wash my hair, thank you very much. I also showered, for your information. Which doesn't always happen, actually, not with toddler." Do I not look like I showered? I'm about to sniff my armpits just to make sure, but he laughs.

  "I believe you," he says. "You look clean."

  "Uh…thanks."

  "Your kid is playing with uncooked rice. On the floor."

  "No kidding," I say. "It keeps her entertained while I cook dinner."

  "What if she eats it?"

  "I'm mostly positive she won't die from eating raw rice," I say.

  "Mostly," he says, looking at me warily.

  "Have you ever even met a child before?" I ask. "Scratch that part. I'm pretty concerned that you've not had very much human interaction, period."

  "I've had a ton of human interaction, for your information," Luke says, sauntering over to the kitchen counter where I'm peeling potatoes. "Mostly with females, obviously."

  I cough. "Obviously?"

  "I can be charming," he says.

  "Color me shocked."

  "Not with you," he says, wrinkling his nose as he looks at me. "Give me that peeler. I'm surprised you haven't ripped half the skin off your hand already, the way you're doing that."

  I hand him the peeler and potato. "There you go, hotshot. You think you can do a better job? Go right ahead. What do you mean, you can be charming but not with me?"

  "You're not my type," he says, taking the peels off the potato much more easily than the way I'd been mangling the poor vegetable. "So I don't have to turn up the charm."

  I don't bother to hold back my snort. "You're telling me you've got game?"

  "Red, I've got more game than you'd know what to do with."

  I groan. "Don't do that."

  "Don't do what?" he asks.

  "Call me Red," I say. "Give me a nickname, some stupid jock thing. Or frat thing. You're in college or something, right?"

  "You think I'm a jock or a frat guy?" he asks. "Wait, how old do you think I am?"

  "I don’t know," I say. "Twenty. Twenty-one. How old are you? Oh, hell, don't tell me you're eighteen."

  "Twenty-four," he says, puffing out his chest. "I've been out of college for three years, thanks. I mean, I haven't been out of college for twenty years like you or whatever."

  "I'm thirty-four, not fifty-five."

  "Honestly, I'd have pegged you for late twenties," he says. "You've really aged well."

  "I've aged well?" I ask. "Like a cheese?"

  "More like a wine," he says. "Wine sounds better than cheese."

  "Is this the famous game you were talking about earlier?" I ask.

  "I'm doling it out in small increments," he says. He turns, chopping the potatoes into cubes and dropping them into the water. "I wouldn't want to overwhelm you with the ol' Luke charm. Hope you wanted these in the water; I just assumed."

  "I don't think there's any danger of my being overwhelmed with the Luke charm," I say, watching as he begins to wash and chop vegetables, rummaging around my kitchen cupboard drawers like he owns the place. "Is there something you're looking for?"

  "A knife," he says. "Your knives are all wrong. Don't you have any basic cooking tools?"

  "Yeah, I have a knife right there."

  "This is a steak knife, and it's not even sharp. How do you make food?"

  "I use the knives I have," I say. "What's the problem?"

  He stops and stares behind me, and I follow his gaze to Olivia, who's bent over, licking the tile floor. "Is that normal? That doesn't seem normal."

  "Oh my God," I sigh the words. "She's a toddler. They lick floors. Olivia, stop licking the floor." Olivia has her tongue pressed flat against the tile now. I'm almost positive she's doing it just for dramatic effect.

  She's probably actually a genius baby who can understand what we're saying and is just screwing with us, I think as I open the fridge to pull out her sippy cup of milk so I can distract her from French-kissing the floor in front of the way-too-hot, way-too-young obviously not-that-bright firefighter who's standing in my kitchen peeling my potatoes. That practically sounds like an innuendo.

  "You're blushing," Luke says, gesturing toward me with the peeler in his hand, like it's a pointer or something. "Did she embarrass you?"

  I hand Olivia the sippy cup and she rolls onto her back and thanks me. "Did you hear that? That was a thank you. She even has manners. Did she embarrass me by licking the floor? No, of course not."

  Luke is looking at the chicken I've marinated, a look of disgust on his face. "Is this marinated in salad dressing?"

  "Yeah. The recipe was on the back of the bottle."

  He makes a strangled sound, and I start to walk toward the counter, but he shoos me away. "Back off, Red," he says. "You lost your kitchen privileges."

  "This is my kitchen."

  "Which is why you should lose your kitchen privileges," he says. "Since you should be ashamed of yourself and your poor culinary skills. Go over there. Play with your kid and her rice or whatever and I'll fix this mess."

  "Do you usually just waltz into strangers' homes and start cooking them dinner?"

  "Cooking them dinner?" he asks. "Us. I do the work of salvaging this mess of chicken you have here, that means I'm a freaking honorary guest at dinner."

  "My poor culinary skills?" I ask, just catching what he said. "I'm not a traditional kind of girl."

  He makes a sound under his breath, his back turned toward me, and I can't tell if he's laughing at me or scoffing. "No kidding, Red."

  "Are you going to stop calling me that?"

  He shrugs. "Probably not."

  "Okay, then."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Luke

  The phone buzzes again and I glance down at the third message in a row from Bethany. Or was it Brandi? Or Bambi? I think it
was Bambi. It was some kind of cartoon name. I listed her in my phone as "Bimbo," because she is. As evidenced by the series of text messages I've gotten from her in the past twenty minutes:

  OMG WTF U STUPID AHOLE

  RU STANDING ME UP AGAIN?

  FU AND UR STUPID DICK. URNEVR GETTING SOME OF THIS AGAIN.

  OH, AND UR ASS IS NOT THAT HOT.

  PS UR CAMPER IS FUGLY AS FUCK

  The third message was followed by a photo of her tits and another text:

  REMEMBER THESE?

  Autumn looks up from cutting the kid's chicken into bite-sized pieces. "You want to take that?" she asks.

  I shut the phone off completely. "I'm about to go drop it in the sink."

  She smirks. She's so smug, like she knows me. "Girl trouble?"

  "Or maybe I'm a doctor on call. Did you ever think about that?"

  Autumn snorts. "So, what's her name?" she asks.

  I shrug. "Bambi?" I say, uncertainly. "I don't actually know."

  She laughs and shakes her head, and it suddenly irritates me that she thinks I'm some kind of immature, womanizing asshole. It's accurate, but I'm still annoyed by her assumption.

  But then she takes a bite of her chicken, and closes her eyes. "Where'd someone like you learn to cook like this?"

  "Someone like me?" I ask. "Seriously, Red, you just trying to insult me, or does it come naturally to you?"

  Her face colors. "Sorry," she says. "I meant – well, you're living in a trailer down by the river by yourself and…"

  "So, what, you assume I'm so white trash I can't possibly know how to cook?"

  "That's not what I meant,” she says.

  I raise my eyebrows. "This is hardly my finest work. You need to stock your kitchen appropriately. I mean, your kid is going to grow up thinking that crap you're feeding her is how food should taste."

  Autumn laughs, her eyes wide. "Has anyone ever told you you're completely obnoxious?" she asks, shaking her head. "Scratch that. I imagine you get that all the time."

  I take a pull from my beer, looking her over. Shit, I can't stop looking this chick over, even with her kid sitting right there. "Ditto, sweetheart."

  "Actually, people don't tell me I'm obnoxious," she says, her tone haughty. "And besides, it's not like I have lots of spare time to cook. In case you haven't noticed, I'm running a business here."

  "And you have foreman problems," I note. I watch her as she takes another bite of food and coos at her kid, who's shoveling handfuls of mashed potatoes into her mouth.

  "That was my third foreman."

  "You need to get better at picking 'em." I say, swallowing another gulp of beer.

  "I may not be the best judge of character," she says. The way she says it, heavy, makes me think there's a lot more to that statement than just this thing with the foreman.

  I don't ask what she means, because hell if I need to get involved in some chick's drama, even though I have to admit, part of me is curious about her story, how someone like her ends up in West Bend with a baby. I don't know what kind of man lets a chick as hot as her go, but he has to be a moron.

  We eat in silence for a minute, or relative silence, anyway – her kid is babbling away, talking in what sounds like total gibberish to me, but Autumn seems to understand what she's saying. Or at least she pretends to. Autumn talks to her, and the kid's face lights up as she responds.

  "Kentucky," Autumn says, still looking at Olivia.

  "Excuse me?" I'm not sure if she's talking to me or the kid, or if she has a case of Tourette's.

  "My accent," she says, looking at me. Hell, her eyes are the greenest green I think I've ever seen. "It's from Kentucky. I don't know why I'm telling you that."

  "West Bend is a long way from Kentucky." Shit, I sound like an idiot. I can't come up with anything better than that?

  "I'm not an idiot, you know," she says.

  "Hell, where did that come from? Did I say you were?"

  She shakes her head. "Nope, but I know you thought it, when you were out here," she says. "You think I have no idea what I'm doing, out here running an orchard. And, well, I don't, not with the specifics of the orchard part anyway. That's why I need a foreman. But I know what I'm doing with making hard cider."

  I hold up my beer. "Why are you offering me beer if you've got cider?"

  She shrugs. "You look like a beer drinker," she says. "Have you had my cider?"

  I almost say something lewd about what I'd like from her, but I bite my tongue. She seems too tightly wound to appreciate it, and her kid is sitting right here. "Can't say that I have."

  Autumn stands up. "Keep an eye on Olivia for a second," she says, before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Olivia and I stare at each other. She blinks a few times, eyeballing me as skeptically as a kid her age can.

  "Can't say I blame you, looking at me like that, kid," I say, leaning closer to her high chair and sticking out my tongue at her. When she mimics me, sticking her tongue out and blowing raspberries before cackling hysterically, I find myself unreasonably thrilled.

  Autumn reappears a moment later with a glass jug in her hand. "I see you're keeping each other entertained."

  "You say that like we're on the same wavelength."

  "Well, you're not that much older than her," she says, pouring me a glass. When she looks at me, she's smiling.

  "You're full of jokes," I say. "At your age, I'm surprised your mind is still fresh."

  "Hilarious," she says, wiping Olivia's face and hands with a towel. She takes the kid out of her high chair and she starts toddling around the room. "This is a small batch of cider, a new recipe. I'm trying a different apple."

  I take a sip, half-concerned this is going to be one of those situations like when my buddies brew beer and it tastes like shit but I have to tell them it's great so they don't get their panties in a wad, but it's not one of those cases at all. "It's good. Legitimately good," I say. "Where the hell did you learn to brew cider?"

  She smiles slyly as she walks past me, chasing after Olivia, who's disappearing into the living room. "I might not be able to cook, but I can brew," she says. "It's in my blood."

  When she returns with Olivia on her hip, I stand. "I should go."

  "Yeah," she says. "I have to get the baby a bath."

  I pause there awkwardly for a second, because the weird thing is, I find myself not wanting to go. Usually I'm trying to run like hell out of a situation like this -- the kind where a chick is talking to me and not putting out. But I'm curious about this girl. "What did you mean, it's in your blood?"

  "Brewing is," she says, following me to the door.

  "You brew beer too?"