How could he ever be interested in me after finding out?
I had worked so hard to figure out this little life of mine and now, with Levi’s explosive entrance back in Clark City, everything was out of place. He’d turned my world upside down and me inside out. Levi Cole wasn’t going to be happy until he’d managed the complete and utter destruction of me.
This was maybe his best revenge yet.
17
A New Hope
The next two weeks developed a kind of routine that involved Levi in my life more than I had ever anticipated. He came to Rosie’s for breakfast every weekday morning around six-thirty when all the working farmers showed up.
In the middle of November, we’d almost reached the off season for the agricultural industry, so I knew work was slowing down for him. Also, I’d asked. Partly because I was nosy, but also because I was genuinely curious.
His father really did want to retire. But more than that, he wanted Levi home to step up in the family business. Rich Cole was not an old man, nor was he struggling with his health. Levi and he had developed a ten-year plan of sorts designed to hand over the entire business in layers. That’s why he had time to stop by the diner every morning before he headed out to the Cole farm.
He’d also leased his apartment in town for two years. He said the farm was too small with his parents living there. I’d seen the Cole Family Farmhouse. It was not small. I took that to mean, he’d been on his own for too long. Speaking from experience, as one who still lived with her mom, he had done the right thing.
He planned to build a house on property nearby, but not until he could afford the land on his own.
We’d shared all of this over refills of his coffees and pleasant smiles. He was never impatient with me as I bustled around the diner every morning, hopping from one overall-wearing farmer to the next. He was always ready with that gentle smile that made my toes curl at the same time my heart always lurched in paranoia. He always tipped big.
I wasn’t sure if that was because he was still checking out my ass every time I turned around or if he was just being kind.
The rest of the ogling men had stopped though—checking out my ass and tipping well. I blamed Levi, but I was also too confused to know how to feel about it.
I saw him other times too, not just in the morning. He showed up Friday nights for the supper rush. I ran into him at the Piggly Wiggly twice and both times he bought Max a treat. He was at the big pep rally when the football team made it to state. He was at the post office dropping off a stack of things for his dad when I went to mail some bills. When I stopped for gas a few days ago, he jogged across the street from the hardware store to say hi. He was everywhere.
That was the problem with living in a small town. It was hard to avoid anyone, let alone a man I suspected was intentionally looking for me in the crowd.
It was strange to have had Levi absent from my life for seven years and then suddenly in it—and not just in the passive sense of the word. Levi wasinmy life. Everywhere in it. He’d developed a friendship with Max that I didn’t even want to think about. He was winning over Coco and Emilia. He had Rosie wrapped around his finger. And he was slowly, surely breaking down a lifetime of walls I’d built to keep him out.
By the Saturday before Thanksgiving, when he showed up at the trailer and knocked on the door, I wasn’t even surprised. He’d stopped by the diner for supper last night and my mom had happened to be there with Max. The two of them met in the middle of the restaurant like they were the best of friends and couldn’t wait to hang out.
Max had bugged him about Star Wars again. Apparently, his friend Daniel was a big fan and he was telling Max all about it during school. Max couldn’t wait to experience it himself and since it wasn’t one of those movies I could grab from the Redbox at the Pump and Pantry, I hadn’t found a way for him to watch it yet.
Plus, this felt like Levi’s thing. As weird as it was to give him a piece of Max, I couldn’t bring myself to take it from either of them.
They’d made tentative plans for Levi to bring the movies over tonight, but I hadn’t expected Levi to actually follow through. Max hadn’t said anything about it all day and I had hoped he forgot.
But just as I was staring at an open fridge, trying to decide what to make for supper, a knock on the trailer door interrupted our evening and my life and my poor, jaded heart.
“It’s Levi!” Max shouted, jumping up from his LEGOs and rushing to the door.
I closed the refrigerator and followed after him, in case it wasn’t Levi. Max pulled the door open and grinned.
The smell of hot pizza hit me first and by the time the door swung all the way open and I was given my first full view of Levi Cole tonight, I was already smiling.
He stood in the doorway in dark-wash jeans, leather work boots and a gray, long-sleeve t-shirt with his family’s farm logo on the front. He was casual and adorable and… he stole my breath with his soft smiles and intense green eyes and mussed hair. He’d let it grow longer on top over the last couple weeks. It was a good look on him.
But honestly, the man could wear granny panties and sackcloth and he’d somehow come out of it looking like a GQ model.
I mean, in essence, Levi Cole was a farmer. And there shouldn’t be anything hot about a farmer. And yet… he had me on fire.
Okay, he wasn’t technically the overall wearing, straw-chewing hillbilly I waited on at Rosie’s. He was being trained to take over an agricultural monopoly that made an ungodly amount of money. But still, he was, by definition, a farmer.
So why did I find him so irresistibly attractive?
“You said you were usually at home,” he said by way of a greeting. “Thought I’d drop by and see how you’re doing.”
