“She’s part Shephard. She’ll be quick to learn. Alex has got two – let me grab him.” Jake called his cousin over and the conversation moved from Jake’s harem to dog training.
It should’ve been simple. Easy. But Lainey couldn’t help thinking about what Jake had said.
Too much like hard work.
And why did that matter?
“That was really mean!”
“Mean? Does a woman of your age really still use the wordmean?”
Lainey debated whether knocking him into the stream they were passing would be acceptable, given he currently had hero status.
“Does a man of your age really still get his kicks from winding up people just to embarrass them?” She was going to feed him to his pigs.
Jake laughed.
Lainey’s blood boiled.
“Did you really think that I started training to be a priest?”
Lainey choked on her words before they could come out. In her wine addled mind, she’d figured that Jake had been so heartbroken when Keren hadn’t returned his affections, he’d decided to join the Church. Somehow, he’d managed to convince her – in front of everyone – and she’d believed every word of it, until he’d gone a bit too far with trying to bless a freshly opened bottle of wine and she’d lobbed a cushion at him.
“Seriously, do I strike you as a priestly type?”
She shook her head, even though she knew he’d barely see her in the dark.
“I wonder what else I can get you to believe?”
“I’d rather you just didn’t speak to me.”
He laughed again. Her blood boiled over.
For the rest of the fifteen-minute walk home, she ignored whatever he tried to say. She’d had too much to drink to be able to think of any smart comebacks, so ignoring him seemed like the best course of action to take.
For the last five minutes, he’d not said anything to her either and it was driving her mad. And driving her even more mad because it was driving her mad.
“I’m going to watch you get inside safely.” He’d followed her down the side path to the back of her farmhouse. Lainey, like most residents in Severton, used the back door as the main entrance point. The front was for guests. Some traditions died hard.
“I’ll be fine. I can look after myself.” Her words were snapped out. She looked at him as she said them and saw something different on his face, something she’d not seen before.
He was, quite possibly, the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. Blonde hair that was always a bit too long, blue eyes that danced and a chiselled jaw with enough scruff to make her wonder exactly how it would feel between her thighs. Her ex had been nowhere near as attractive and he’d made a comment to her one night, after an evening out, that she was batting out of her league with him. She knew at the time it was just words to put her down, but they’d been words that had burned like salt on a wound.
“Don’t care.” He folded his arms, expecting another row. “I might mess with you, Lainey Green, but no one else will.”
She unlocked the door, her annoyance of him fading, leaving her feeling confused instead.
Chapter Eight
Jake Maynard was fucking shattered.
Lambing season hadn’t finished. It should’ve, but it hadn’t. That was the problem with rare breeds, the ones madmen like him kept because no one else did, and no one else did because there was no money in it, not really. Rare breeds were like fussy women; they did things when it suited them rather than when they should.
A bit like the rare breed next door.
Lainey had been out on horseback far more than he’d anticipated. She’d started to have the farmhouse renovated, using builders he’d recommended – thankfully she wasn’t quite that stubborn – and her clients’ schedule had been organised so that any disruption from the builders was minimised. That had ended up leaving her with the end of the afternoons and early evenings free to train her horses, which he’d noticed was something she was pretty good at.
Jake had grown up around horses. He’d learned to ride at pretty much the same age he’d learned to climb trees, which meant he was pretty good at making sure he could stop himself from getting really hurt when he inevitably fell or got thrown off, because that happened. Just like you could injure yourself when you climbed, everything came with a risk. It was how you managed that risk, and it wasn’t by avoiding it.
