At four in the morning, Jameson sat in Luna’s kitchen, the only sound his fingers hitting his laptop’s keyboard. Oh, and the high-speed buzz saw that wasn’t a buzz saw at all but Sprout snoring in his lap. He himself should be tired too, but he’d never needed much sleep. Tonight, he felt especially restless.
And uncharacteristically stressed out.
Looking at the numbers for the farm, running them every possible way, he wasn’t sure he could save the place. It felt like the most important project of his life, and yet for the first time since college, failure was on the table.
He hated, hated, the thought. He’d made a promise to Silas that he’d help Luna whichever way she wanted to go, and he didn’t break promises, especially to the man who’d given him everything.
He planned to give everything of himself in return, but not just for Silas.
In the beginning, he’d felt like the outsider. But at nearly two weeks in, everyone here treated him the exact same as they did each other, like he’d been here forever, like he was one of them, leaving him genuinely thrown by their generosity of spirit. He had little to no experience being part of a crew like this, but he liked it. In fact, he liked it a whole lot. He wasn’t exactly sure how he fit in, a numbers guy who’d never operated as part of a team, but they were trying. And so would he.
A sound pulled him out of his thoughts. A sound he couldn’t quite place. He rose and set Sprout on the chair before moving into the dark living room, where he hit the light switch.
And froze.
As did Luna, who wielded a baseball bat like she wasn’t afraid to use it, complete with bed head and no pants. She was choked up on the bat, her T-shirt also hiked up to nearly the promised land, her mile-long legs and feet bare.
“Might want to put the bat down,” he said. “If you lift it even a fraction of an inch more, I’m going to know what color your undies are.”
Luna tossed the bat on the couch and tugged her oversized black T-shirt down her thighs. “How do you know I’m not commando?”
“God-given talent. The bat’s a nice touch.”
She snorted. “I thought you were a bear.”
He smiled. “Were you coming out here to save the muffins on your counter, or me?”
She bit her lower lip.
“You forgot I was here.” Endearing, but hard on the ego. “I was working. I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“No, my stomach did that. How do numbers take up so many hours of the day?”
“Well, for one thing, I don’t just throw the receipts into a ledger and hope for the best.”
She laughed. “Cute. I need a snack.”
He smiled, and she pointed at him. “You are not going to be my snack.”
But she was tempted, he could tell.
She moved past him and into the kitchen, where she rustled around, coming up with a family-size bag of BBQ chips.
“That’s not going to hold you long. Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing to the fridge.
“Help yourself.”
He emerged from the fridge with tortillas, cheese, an avocado, and a tomato. “Grilled quesadilla okay with you?”
She looked surprised, this kick-ass woman who took care of everyone and everything in her world, as if maybe no one ever offered to take care of her. “Sounds fancy.”
“No, just good.”
“As long as you don’t use those peppers on the counter. Shep grows them and he’s constantly leaving me a few, and I can’t bring myself to tell him how much I hate them.”
“I do too.”
She graced him with a huge smile, as if now she suddenly felt bonded to him. Not over their loss of Silas, or being business partners, but because he hated peppers too, that made him trust-worthy. Good to know where she stood. He located a pan and cut up the tomato and avocado. The kitchen was small, but instead of feeling cramped, it felt . . . intimate.
Luna had hopped up to sit on the counter, settling in with her legs swinging back and forth over the edge, watching with ravenous ecstasy as he flicked on a burner to heat up the pan. He thought about giving her incentive to want him as much as she did the food, but he wasn’t sure he’d win over the quesadilla.
Sprout watched too, suddenly wide awake.
“You cook a lot?” she asked.
“Not nearly as much as I used to.”
“Why did you stop?”
“I used to cook for me and my mom because she was always working.” He paused for the gut punch he felt every time he talked about her. And it came, but so did a soft smile because the memories of her were all so sweet. “And when I say cook, I mean easy stuff.”
She smiled. “Like quesadillas.”
“And ramen. And anything else you can do on a budget. We were poor as dirt, but it took me a long time to realize that. She never let it show.”
“Sounds like she was amazing.”
He nodded. “Amazing, scrappy, fiery, and passionately protective.” Then he found another smile. “Like someone else I know.”
She cocked her head to the side in confusion and he chuckled. “You, Luna.”
She looked like she was running back his words in her head, trying to decide if she was pleased or not. Then smiled. “I’d have liked her then.”
“Yes.”
She opened then shut her mouth.
“Since when do you hold back your words?” he asked.
“Do you really think I’m all those things?”
“Yes,” he said seriously, wanting her to believe him. “You’re brave and gutsy and tenacious. You surprise me, and I haven’t been surprised by anything in a very long time.” She was also definitely his particular brand of kryptonite, not that he planned on admitting that. He waved the spatula at her.
“What?”
“You know what,” he said. “Now you tell me something.”
“Such as . . . ?” she asked warily.
“I don’t know. What was your home life like?”
“Well . . . I was an only child, and my parents adopted me later in life. They’re doctors. Not scrappy or fiery. Serious. Very serious. And maybe protective. But not passionate, not really. They were good to me, are good to me, but I’ve been a disappointment. They wanted me to do what they do. But not only did I fail o-chem in college . . . that life, it was always too restrictive for me. Too many rules, too much of having to fall into line.”
He smiled. “And you don’t fall into line.”
She laughed. “Not willingly anyway. So as you can imagine, I didn’t quite fulfill their expectations.”
To hide the sympathy she would hate, he busied himself with scooping the quesadillas onto two plates. Then pushed one toward her. She took a bite and let out a “yummy” sound.
“They should be proud of you, running this whole place,” he said quietly, enjoying the sight of her in that T-shirt on the counter, eating like what he’d made was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
“They are proud. In their own way.”
She didn’t look at him as she said that, and he wanted to hug her. “Expectations are hard,” he said.
“What’s harder is unmet familial expectations.”
He nodded the truth of that. “Your grandfather had a lot of expectations for me.”
She laughed. “He only came once a quarter, and that was for the best. He always had Milo shaking in his boots and Chef burning food. Once Stella came into the café when he was eating and told him his future was going to be lonely if he kept being so grumbly, and that she was willing to make him less lonely if he was interested.”
Jameson choked out a laugh picturing that. “What happened?”
“He told her he preferred his own company, so he didn’t give a shit. And then shortly after that he vanished, and so did Stella. Didn’t think anything of it until the next morning when I realized his car was still in the lot.”
Jameson choked on a bite of his quesadilla. “Him and Stella . . . ?”
She shrugged. “Neither of them ever said. But the next morning he actually said goodbye to everyone when he left. I asked Stella about it and she said a real lady would never kiss and tell.”
They both shuddered at the mental image.
“You make a mean quesadilla,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
Their gazes met and held, and that weird charged-air thing happened again.
“So,” she said after a long beat. “What were you working on?”
“Trying to figure out how to pay all the bills this month.”
She leaned in and looked at his screen. “Why are the tractor barrel ride and the haystack slides highlighted?”
“The insurance liability coverage is killing us. I spoke to the adjuster. We can cut the bill down by limiting liability.”
“But the visitors love the tractor barrel ride and the haystack slides.”
“No, the visitors love you guys,” he said. “Luna, to make this work, we need to find more ways to make money, and also cut the fat. All of it. We gotta go as lean as possible.”
“You can’t just math away the experiences our visitors get here,” she said.
“And you can’t sweet-talk a ledger filled with red into miraculously turning black and profitable. Ten minus twenty will always equal a negative number.” He paused and looked at her. “Look, I’m just trying to honor your wishes and find a way to keep all the employees. I know how much they mean to you.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “Would it help if I cut my salary and we rented out this cabin? I could move out.”
Damn, his heart melted for her. “We’re not dislodging you. You already don’t make nearly as much as you should. In fact, you’ve been underpaid. I’ve been thinking too. We make more money off the orchards than anything else. Why not get rid of the second barn and free up some acreage for more space to plant.”
“You mean Stella’s Place?” Luna immediately shook her head. “Those shops make us money, and people love the goods. Stella’s put five years into the business. And, well, if we lose the barn and she has to go live with my parents, there will be bloodshed.”
“The shops are underperforming. We’re going to have to make some hard decisions, or everyone’s going to lose their business.”
“I know.” She hopped off the counter and walked toward him, not stopping until her bare toes touched his. Then she brushed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “We’ll figure it out.”
He caught her hand as she started to walk off. “What was that?”
“A good night kiss.”
He gave a slow shake of his head and slowly pulled her into him, giving her plenty of time to say no. When she didn’t, he kissed her. Not on her jaw, but on that delicious mouth of hers. She made that sound he loved and tried to climb him like a tree. When he pulled back, she gave a soft whimper of protest. He smiled into her dazed face. “Now that’s a good night kiss.”
“And more,” she murmured, voice husky, her fingers touching her lips as if to hold on to the taste of him.
He smiled. “Not so cute now, am I?”
“Try sexy as hell on for size,” she muttered, and pointed at him. “Stop it.”
He lifted his hands in innocence, making her laugh.
Then she set a hand to his chest. “We’ll figure it out,” she repeated, but this time he knew she wasn’t talking about the farm. And then she vanished into her room.
“How? How will we figure it out?” he asked of the kitchen, which didn’t answer.
And so the nights went for the next week. With Jameson often working late and Luna not being a great sleeper, they often ran into each other late at night, usually in the kitchen.
He’d asked if he should go back to his own cabin. She’d looked at him for a long moment, then shaken her head. Fine by him, he enjoyed her company even if it wasn’t of the naked variety. He had no idea why she hadn’t kicked him out, she tended to keep her own counsel, but he was grateful.
There’d been more kissing and touching, but it hadn’t gone further. It was almost as if they both felt gun-shy and afraid to mess up their tenuous connection, not to mention their partnership.
One late night after Luna had gone to bed, he took a shower, having to slide aside a few bras that were drying on the shower rod, all of which were lacy or silky, and skimpy. He thought about her wearing the sexy lingerie beneath her jeans and T-shirts, and the shower took a little longer than he’d intended.
After, he realized he didn’t have any clean clothes for the next day—unless he wanted to go back into a suit. Instead, he headed to the washing machine in the kitchen with an armful of clothes, and shoved everything into one load, whites and colors together. He could almost hear his mom’s voice admonishing him in his ear. Smiling to himself, he sat at the table in knit boxers and went back to his laptop.
An hour later the clock struck midnight as he pulled out a pair of jeans from the dryer.
He was just pulling them up when he heard footsteps coming his way. He knew exactly what to expect now, and still, as she rounded the corner in her pj’s—tonight a cami and the tiniest shorts he’d ever seen—she stole his breath.
She stopped short, as if him shirtless in her kitchen had taken her breath as well.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“Hungry.”
So was he, but not for food. Still, he made her a quesadilla and handed it over.
“These have become an addiction.”
He opened his mouth to say he felt the same about her, but just then she pulled her quesadilla in half, and when the cheese stretched between the two sides, she snagged the melted strings of cheese—with her tongue.
“Don’t you think?” she asked.
He’d lost track of their conversation. That’s what happened when the blood in his brain drained for parts south. “What?”
“There’s got to be something we can do to fix this.” She licked some cheese off her thumb with a suction sound that didn’t help matters any. She finished eating, then sighed in exhaustion.
Living on the farm as he was, he’d become privy to her schedule, which was rising before dawn to help feed the animals, making sure they were all taken care of, making sure everything was cleaned up and looking good for the people who would pay to come in, and so much more. In his greatest imagination, he couldn’t have managed a day in her life. “You’re not okay.”
“No. I’m stressed.” She put a hand to her chest. “I need to alleviate some of it.”
He raised a brow as she rifled through a laundry basket on top of her dryer, producing a pair of sweats, which she pulled on. Then she reached into the dryer and threw something at him.
One of his shirts. He’d sorta hoped this would be going the other way. “What are we doing?” he asked.
“I know the perfect thing for stress.”
“So . . . my night’s about to get better then?”
“Follow me, funny guy.”
He’d probably follow her right off a cliff, which wasn’t as shocking as it should’ve been. He was somehow getting used to the fact that he was incredibly attracted to her, enough to allow himself to wonder how things might work if they gave this thing between them a go.
Taking his hand, she led him down the path toward the animal barn. Inside, they walked past the emu pen. Estelle stuck her head over the gate to eye Jameson, and he just managed to resist covering his ass with his hands.
Luna laughed, and he was wondering why this was the place she’d chosen to improve their night when she let them into the baby goat pen.
DZ and his two siblings were all in pj’s, the three of them looking adorably sleepy as Luna grabbed a lantern off a hook and turned it on, setting it in the middle of the pen. “Sit,” she said to Jameson.
“In the hay?”
She plopped down and crisscrossed her legs, patting the spot next to her.
By this time, Dammit Ziggy was losing his mind, bouncing in front of Jameson, bleating to be picked up. So he sat and DZ hopped into his lap. His two sisters, Mini and Pearl, were in Luna’s, and she was cuddling them both, laughing softly as they nuzzled her.
She’d been right. Sitting with baby goats in the middle of the night was incredibly relaxing. So was being with Luna. With hay in her hair and in those big baggy sweats, he probably couldn’t have found her body if he’d tried, and she still looked edible. One of the goats licked her chin and she laughed again, her eyes smiling and sparkling in the light of the lantern. His thigh was pressed to hers, and without allowing himself to think, he wrapped his free arm low on her hips and leaned into her. “You’re beautiful.”
She laughed this off. “You need glasses.”
No, he didn’t. Hell, he could see her with his eyes closed. Because he knew her now. She was tough as they came, and resilient as hell, but this farm was a huge strain on her and he was as guilty as everyone else in her circle of not looking past her easy strength to see it.
When the goats had fallen asleep again, he turned to Luna, rising to his feet, pulling her up with him. Taking her hand, he moved them out of the pen and into the night where he walked her to the cabin. In her kitchen, he set water to boil for the tea she loved.
“I don’t want to lose any employees,” she said softly. “Or the rescue animals. We’re all they have.”
He turned to her and, putting his hands on her waist, lifted her onto the counter she’d been leaning against. She spread her knees in invitation, and unable to resist, he stepped between them, hands on her thighs, dipping his head a little to look into her eyes. “I know. And I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“I can’t fail.”
His heart ached for the responsibility she’d put on herself. And again he felt pissed off at Silas for letting her take all this on herself. Sure, he’d given her a job, an important one. But he’d underpaid her, and had left her in a tough if not impossible situation. “What can I do for you?” he whispered.
She stared at him. “A hug would be nice.”
He wrapped her up in his arms.
“Thanks,” she breathed, leaning into him, relaxing as if he was giving her comfort.
She was certainly giving him comfort, the way she hooked one arm around his neck, her other around his back, squeezing like he was her only anchor in a rough storm. And he relaxed into her with only one thought in his head.
She felt like home.
She pressed her face in the crook of his neck, her breath warm on his skin, and the air seemed to shift around them as the hug went from comfort to something else entirely.
And still she didn’t let go. Instead, she lifted her head slightly so that her every exhale brushed over his jaw, and then right beneath his ear, which he’d never realized until he shivered was a go button for him.
“Still not a fan of working together,” she whispered, and he was pretty sure she was gliding her mouth over that sensitive spot on purpose now.
He could only manage a nod.
“And we should definitely never sleep together since we’re working so closely. Right?”
When he didn’t answer, she lifted her head and they stared at each other as a heated beat went by. “Right?” she whispered.
He gave a slow headshake, then kissed her. Long. Deep. Until they were both pulling at clothes.
“This is probably really stupid,” she whispered, tugging his shirt up.
He took over, pulling it the rest of the way off. “One hundred percent accurate.”
They stared at each other some more. “Luna, your opinion is the only thing that matters to me. Do you want this?”
She let out a rough laugh. “Can’t you tell?”
“I need you to say it.”
“I want this,” she said readily. “I want you, Jameson.” And then she fused her mouth to his.