They worked in silence side by side until the pot of soap was empty and they had rows of filled molds stretched out in front of them. Andy took his pitcher and put it in the pot with hers before dumping all of them in the sink. He opened his mouth to say something about what happened earlier, but she turned her back on him so quickly it made him think she was avoiding him. He let her get away with it for the moment but he found himself feeling surprisingly determined about confronting her later.
“How long do you think you’re going to stay?” she asked, facing the sink.
“I don’t know.”
When in doubt, might as well go with as close to the truth as possible.He’d already been there longer than he intended. The way things were going, he might stay until he was cleared to go back to Southerland Security. Unless it was a hardship for her. He liked messing with her. Hell, it was one of his new favorite things, but he didn’t want to cause her any real trouble or expense. The thought pushed another question he had to the surface of his mind.
“I’d like to stay until Jake’s in a better place. Emotionally,” he hurried to add so she didn’t think he was dissing the farm. He had more good things than bad to say about what she was doing with the farm. A lot more good. The hippie tree-hugger thing still bugged him but he could see the good that the farm—and Andy—did for the people staying there. “I’m happy to pay my way. I don’t expect you to put me up for free.”
“No.” The word came out harsh and sharp with a kind of finality that felt like overkill for nothing more than hospitality. Andy stood straighter, squaring her shoulders, everything in her posture projecting big damn walls she clearly had no intention of letting him breach.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said, dusting off his underused diplomacy. “I just don’t want to be a burden. This is a big place. I’m not sure how you pay for everything, but you can’t keep it running on lettuce and soap sales.”
In the beginning, he’d wondered if she got some kind of grant money to keep the farm going. Supporting a half dozen or more adults couldn’t come cheap. Jake told him, in addition to room and board, Sourwood Farm paid him a small stipend. It made sense. Working for room and board was an okay temporary solution, but if the vets at the farm were going to reintegrate into society, they were going to need money to do it. More than their military disability pensions paid. Spending six months or a year at the farm gave them a way to ease back into civilian life and if they were careful with their money, do it with a bit of a nest egg. But it would cost Andy a small fortune and that was before she even touched the farm expenses—mortgage, equipment, vet bills, and feed.
Even if her sales blew away his projections, she had to be bleeding money. He didn’t want to add to the list of people she took care of, but it was more than that. He wanted to help. He had some money set aside. Thanks to Southerland Security, his investment portfolio looked better than he’d ever imagined. Because of his buddy Gabe’s company, he had an investment portfolio and not just a mountain of debt. He could think of a lot worse things to do with his money than help guys who hadn’t been as fortunate as him. He just had to figure out a way to explain all that to Andy without her bristling up like a porcupine.
“We do just fine with our lettuce and soap,” she said, closing the cabinet and pushing past him to get to the sink.
He felt the warmth of her body, the heat probably fueled by her anger, as she moved past him. A simple brush of her shoulder against his arm shouldn’t have the effect on him it did. It didn’t make sense for him to want to wrap himself around her just because she nudged him. His body seemed to have a mind of its own where she was concerned. He had to stop himself from leaning toward her, settling for turning to face her back as she rearranged things in the sink.
“I’m sure you do.”It was lying for a good cause. That had to be allowed.“I’m grateful you let me stay here and even more grateful for what you’re doing for my friend,” he said, leading with a thank-you before he got to the meat of what he wanted to say. “Hell, for all the vets.”
“I don’t want your gratitude.”
Her shoulders sagged and he closed the last few steps between them, not sure what he’d done wrong but needing to fix it.
“Hey, I didn’t mean...” He took her arm, gently shifting her body to face him. The rest of the words died on his tongue when he saw the flash of sadness in her gaze. He had no idea what Andy had to be sad about but contrary to his normal emotionally closed bastard response, he found himself faced with the unusual and uncomfortable desire to fix whatever it was that put the pain in her eyes. “Andy, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said as he watched her slam up barriers faster than a bivouac.
She shrugged out of his grip and he debated whether to let her go or force a confrontation. Her expression had hardened into something resolute, the flash of pain he’d witnessed shoved way out of view. As someone who’d dealt with more than his fair share of pain, he had to respect the self-preservation impulse. Didn’t mean he had to like it and for maybe the first time in his life, he wondered what it cost and whether it was worth the price.
“There’s nothing wrong,” she said, pulling him out of his thoughts and sliding back into thewoman in chargepersona he’d come to expect. “We’re finished here. Why don’t you go see if Millie needs help?” She opened the faucet full blast, dismissing him and his questions.
––––––––
ANDY NEVER MEANT to let him get so close. Making soap with Liam was supposed to knock him off-balance, not make her want to open up and let him inside her carefully constructed walls. He already thought she was some kind of naïve do-gooder. She could see it when he looked at her. He was equal parts fascinated and smugly self-righteous. Like he knew all about thereal worldand she had no idea what it was like outside her idyllic little farm.
She’d watched him put her up on some kind of altruistic pedestal. He might think he knew a hell of a lot more than she did—he’d seen things she couldn’t imagine so in that way, he was probably justified. But for as much as he thought he was smarter than she was, more worldly, he also thought she was better, more good, less damaged than him. He was dead wrong about both. What would happen if he found out the truth? The image he’d built would crumble into a hole in the ground, leaving her with nothing but rubble.
It had taken her a long damn time and a small fortune to come to terms with the person she’d been before Sourwood. Everything had been different before she heard about the farm. Back when she’d been Andrea instead of Andy, with money to burn and a stock trader’s floor worth of balls to bust. Money was power and she’d had plenty of both. She’d been the youngest hottest securities broker at Bench and Stern with a sales portfolio that made the men in the firm green with envy and the CFO willing to give her anything she wanted. She wore her power like a finely tailored Dolce and Gabbana suit, with a pair of YSL pumps as punctuation.
She’d considered it a point of pride that they called her a bitch behind her back. Hell, back then, she wouldn’t have minded if they said it to her face. When it came to making deals, she was ruthless and damn proud of it. Empathy was for people who couldn’t cut it. Some days she’d have happily sold her soul if it raised her quota averages a couple of points.
She’d known more than anyone in any room she walked into. Her razor-sharp mind and ruthless drive made rising to the top of the food chain child’s play. If she hadn’t had any family to speak of—no one to keep her human—what did it matter? She’d had all the friends money could buy. She’d done deal after deal, skirting the line of legality without ever slipping over it. Never mind the people involved; she didn’t even see them. And consciences were for pussies. That changed the day Millie and her husband showed up in Andy’s office.
Shuddering, Andy turned off the water and dried the plastic pitchers with one of the terry cloth towels before stacking them in the metal cabinet. She hated to think about who she’d been and what would have happened to her if she’d never met Millie. But the part she hated more was that despite the fact that she’d single-handedly stolen everything the older couple had, she’d do it all over again rather than risk staying where she was—following the path she’d been on to its inevitable end. And that more than anything showed that regardless of all the ways she’d tried to atone for her past sins, she still was at heart a selfish person. She could spend the rest of her life and several lifetimes afterward trying to make amends and it still wouldn’t wash her clean.
She’d seen the vets wracked with guilt for the things they’d done in combat. She’d felt their pain, but they had one thing she’d never have. Everything they’d done, all the violence they’d been part of, it had all been done for something bigger than them. That’s why they called it serving, because despite how it might feel from the inside, they served the greater good. She’d only served herself.
She tucked everything away, taking extra time to straighten the molds, even going so far as folding the dirty towels. Everything she’d done since she’d bought the farm had been an effort to make things from her previous life right. She could accept that she might never get there, but it wasn’t going to stop her from trying. What she couldn’t do was face Liam and his questions, which meant the house was off-limits for the moment. Walking in on him and Millie engaged in some kind of mutual lovefest was more than her fragile peace could withstand.
It was going to rain. In a couple of hours, everyone would be back from the fields and she’d be surrounded by too much noise to get lost in her introspection. And she’d have a better chance of avoiding Liam and his wandering hands. He hadn’t done more than cup her cheek, and her body melted. Giving him a chance to do more was dangerous, and she hadn’t forgotten his promise to revisit whatever it was that happened between them. Her body might be conflicted about his touch but she wasn’t. Or she was but it didn’t matter; the end result was the same. She had no intention of going to the house until there was a big multi-body buffer between her and the sexy, too-perceptive pain in the ass man with the great eyes and even better hands.
In the meantime, there was another job she could take care of and maybe someone else she could save.
