“I’m not disappointed.” She stuck her tongue out at him and caught him giving her an appreciate sideways look—the admiring kind of look a man gives a woman when he likes what he sees. For a few seconds, the world stood still.
“Me, either.” He winked at her.
It was so obvious they weren’t talking about the same thing that she blushed. Her sweatshirt felt suddenly warmer. Though it was July, mornings were twenty to thirty degrees cooler than afternoons in the mountain lake community she’d grown up in. Like most other locals, she typically wore long sleeves made of lightweight fabric this early in the day, but that hadn’t stopped her from pairing it with her favorite cutoff jean shorts and her comfiest cowgirl boots.
The way Owen was looking at her country gal outfit was doing crazy things to her heart, and he was making no effort to hide that he was looking.Her emotions responded by twanging in all directions like a thousand guitar strings needing to be tuned.
He wasn’t like any guy she’d ever met. He was honest and straightforward. No games. No hidden agendas. Everything he said and did could be taken at face value. Every compliment. Every admiring look. Every expression of gratitude for the way she’d been caring for his twins.
Together, the four of them had settled into a routine that quite simply worked. With each passing day, it felt more and more like they were becoming a family—so much so that Halle was already dreading Jen Tolliver’s return.Though she had no wish to replace the boys’ aunt, she found herself longing to carve out her own place in their hearts. A more permanent place than that of a temporary nanny.
At the moment, Jensen was keeping an eye on the boys while they gathered the first round of eggs for the day. It was never a quick process with Ryder and Cooper because they lingered to play with the chickens, many of which they’d named and claimed as personal pets. Their behavior reminded Halle of her own childhood spent on the farm.
Owen gave her a searching look, stepping her way to lightly bump her shoulder with his. “A penny for your thoughts?”
She bent her head and kicked a pebble to hide another blush. “You’re going to have to pay up first, mister.”
He squatted to pick a single wild daisy and rose to hand it to her. “It’s not a penny, but will this do?”
“Owen,” she breathed, completely mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze. He was offering her a silly little flower, but it suddenly felt like more. Overwhelmingly more.
“What?” He reached over to tap the tip of her nose with the lovely bloom.
She shook her head dazedly at him, unsure how to put what she was feeling into words. James had wined and dined her with dozens of roses, riverboat dinner cruises, and sparkly diamond bracelets and earrings. However, Owen’s heartwarming spontaneity was a thousand times more flattering. It just was.
She was saved from coming up with an answer by a whining buzz that sounded like it was coming from above their heads.
She and Owen tipped their heads back to gaze up at thesource of the strange sound and found themselves staring at something she’d never seen before.
It was round and black, hovering at the level of the treetops.
A nervous chuckle tumbled out of her. “Are we about to get beamed up by an alien spaceship?”
“It’s a drone.” Owen spoke in a low voice, dipping his mouth closer to her ear. His hand settled protectively against her lower back as the strange flying object moved over the fence from Garrett Farm to Aspen Ranch and disappeared. Was Aspen Ranch where it had originated from?
“I’ve never seen a drone like it before,” she mused. It didn’t look like the toys Ryder and Cooper flew around the front yard with their hand-held controls.
“Neither have I.” He was standing close enough to her that she could feel his body heat through her sweatshirt. Or maybe it was her imagination. Whatever the case, it was difficult to focus on anything else.
“I wish I could’ve snapped a picture of it.” She frowned at the tree line that the drone had disappeared behind. The only reason she and Owen had walked this far was that the rows of corn, lettuce, oats, and sunflowers they grew for the chickens stretched this far. That, and they were exploring every inch of the farm like they’d promised they would.
“Hopefully, one of my security cameras recorded it.” He spun her shoulders toward the house, showing he was ready to begin the trek back. “The one closest to where we’re standing is motion-activated and has a lens that can rotate three hundred and sixty degrees.”
“Now you tell me,” she grumbled, pretending to be irritated. “I would’ve waited to scratch my nose if I’d known every move I made was being captured on video.”
“No judgement for any and all nose scratching, Miss Garrett.” He reached over to tuck the daisy behind her ear.
“Glad to hear it, Mr. Tolliver.” She wondered if he realized his hand was still resting on her back and that their togetherness was being caught on camera, too. “I’ll have to think twice now before I make a move.”
“Please don’t.” His voice was low and teasing.
She was pretty sure he was flirting with her, which made her heart race and her breathing grow shallow. She wished she could think of something light and teasing to say back, but her mind was a tangle of disjointed thoughts and emotions.
Then the toe of her boot caught on something, and she pitched forward.
Owen grabbed her elbow before she face-planted beside the row of cornstalks they were walking alongside
Instead, she slid harmlessly to her knees in the soft dirt. “What a klutz!” She glanced around her, trying to figure out what had tripped her, and discovered she was at the edge of a long, jagged gash in the ground.
