“Alright,” Eve whispered.
I eased my hold in her hair, stepping between her thighs. “Did he hurt you?"
She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. It just felt…wrong. So wrong, Rhys.”
I kissed her again. “Good girl for being so damn strong.” She shivered in my arms and I crushed her against me. “Now, tell me what we’re doing for the day.”
What we were doing for the dayincluded checking on that little doe. The creature seemed to have imprinted on me. Eve found that hilarious when the damn thing chewed a hole in my jeans. Not so much when she realized we weren’t going anywhere without it.
“Come on. Bring your other girlfriend,” she grumped at me, casting the doe a baleful eye. But even Eve couldn’t stay snarky for that long. “Just because you got me all muddy and cold for a day doesn’t mean you can steal my man. Got it?” She tapped the doe’s nose, offering the deer a tiny handful of dried corn.
“Hey, that’s too much," I protested.
She looked up at me, surprised written all over her face. “Look who’s been researching,” Eve approved. “Maybe I can make a rancher out of you after all.”
I shook my head and dug my lunch pack out that she’d handed over reluctantly from the fridge before we left the big house an hour earlier. “Here. This is much better for you thanthat sugary crap," I told the undersized doe as she munched chopped carrots out of my hand.
“Fucking women hanging off you,” Eve muttered.
I grinned. “Jealous, firecracker?”
“If she ends up in your bed, I am out.”
“Noted.” I watched her as she sashayed away from me, her hips swaying with more emphasis than usual, I was certain.
It was nice being on the other side of that moral dilemma, if only for a short period.
I scratched the doe under the chin until she ran off too. Then I had my own girl to chase.
Eve climbed into my truck, her fingers brushing the back of my hand as I rested it between us. She’d wanted to check the boundary where I’d found her with that doe that attached itself to me once the critter drifted away, sated and full of both cuddles and food.
I had no objection, needing to work out where the excess wire came from where it should have been attached to somethingfixed, not wrapped about her livestock. The drive up to the place I found her all muddied and cute with a doe in her lap was quiet., but not pensive. The tension between us had shifted from tight and fearful to a different sort that neither of us seemed to mind.
The few points of contact we had left sparks shearing across the back of my hand. It took everything in me not to pull the truck up, unhook her seatbelt and haul my girl into my lap, but Eve hated being rushed. That was part of what got us into this mess in the first place.
Hell, I’d had more patience back when I first arrived at Red Hart. I let out a soft laugh as we drove, and Eve sent me a sideways peek through her hair. She said nothing as we pulled up, jumping down from my truck to meet me near the fence where I thought we might start. It was back a bit from where I’d found her beneath the ruined tree with its lightning charred trunk, but when we arrived at the place where the fence line was cut, someone else was already working on the damage.
My mouth tightened as I counted Joe Brunel’s team, each with their big black trucks parked in a neat line like a preordained barrier beside the fence.
Specifically on the wrong side of the fence, parked beside the wrong landowner.
Pierce leant me some workers.
I’d had reservations then, and more now.
“I thought you gave Joe a different assignment this morning,” I murmured to Eve, turning my head away in an attempt to keep our conversation private.
She shrugged and shook her head. “I was a little occupied,” she whispered back, meeting my eyes with intent written all over them. “Maybe Jude did, but…I kinda missed everything, thanks to you.”
“That’s fair.” I folded my arms. “But a distraction shouldn’t cost you a day’s full wages for work another man organizes on your behalf."
Eve made a kitten sound beside me, one I couldn’t quite decipher as either agreement or dissent.
“I didn’t expect to see you out here, Archer.” Pierce watched his men work, his ass parked on the hood of one of the trucks I suspected he had supplied for the season’s work as a boost in their income.
I frowned, making a note to check who exactly was paying these men and if they were double dipping. “I go wherever the lady needs,” I answered him softly, not really paying attention to the spoiled landowner’s son. I checked myself. Prior landowner’s son. Now the heir himself, Pierce had full control of Black Hill and everything that entailed by himself.
I hoped he took better care of the property than his father had, and with a better attitude, though I doubted it.
