instead of leaving the cat's side, she said, "How old is she?"
He'd worked with bulls for long enough to know that sometimes it was easier to wait for them to come to him than it was to try to shove them into the breeding chute. He leaned against the doorjamb and tried not to notice how pretty Lori looked sitting cross-legged on the floor petting the cat. When the sun streaming in through the window hit her hair just right, the glossy, dark-brown strands held as many shades of red as the leaves on the maple tree in the fall.
"Old."
Her expression didn't change at his terse response. She didn't shrink back, or even look particularly irritated with him. Irrationally, it made him want to see what he could do to get a response out of her.
"How old?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then, when did you get her?"
"I found her in the barn when I bought the place." Since he knew the question was coming, he added, "Three years ago." He looked down at the animal that had purred its way into his heart, even though he'd refused to have one again. "She wouldn't leave."
"You're lucky she stayed with you."
"Lucky?" He had to laugh at that, a rough and jagged sound that held no joy at all. "She'll only eat wet food, she coughs up hairballs the size of tennis balls, and she sheds all over everything."
"I never had a pet."
Lori's pout only served to make her lips look more kissable. Helplessly, he found himself wondering what she would taste like if he ran his tongue all along her full lower lip. What would she do if he bit lightly at the flesh? Would she shiver and moan against his mouth?
He had to forcefully shake the sensual visions out of his head before he could focus on what she was saying. "...Mom always said eight kids were more than enough to contend with."
"You have seven brothers and sisters?"
Crap, he hadn't meant to ask her anything personal, but the question had slipped out in his surprise at what she'd just said. If she had all those brothers, why wasn't one of them out here dragging her back to her real life?
She smiled up at him from where she was sitting, still cuddling his cat, and yet again, he felt the beautiful force of her smile in every cell.
"Seven siblings and a whole bunch more cousins. I've got family pretty much everywhere."
The word family slapped into his heart like she'd let loose a taut rubber band against it, just the way it had when she'd been talking about love.
What the hell was he doing? He couldn't make the mistake of letting her think they were going to be friends. If she managed to make it through the rest of the day, she wasn't going to stay long. As quickly as she'd blown in, she'd blow out again. He couldn't make the mistake of getting attached to her.
Which was why he knew better than to let Lori get attached to anything here, either.
"Mo is going to die soon," he told her in a matter-of-fact tone. "Real soon."
Lori lifted wide eyes to him, then immediately pulled the cat all the way onto her lap, which prompted a fit of rapid-fire sneezes. Of course, good old Mo was so old and tired that the cat barely reacted to the loud sounds as she settled deeper into Lori's arms.
"How can you say that about your own cat? It's like you don't even have a heart."
He preferred it that way. Not having a heart meant nothing could hurt him again.
Grayson didn't care one bit for worrying about this beautiful stranger getting attached to his dying cat...or to him.
"She has leukemia," he said, his voice gentler now simply because, for all that he might want her to think it, he wasn't a monster. "The vet expected her to go months ago. He doesn't know how she's managed to hang on this long."
From out of nowhere, he was struck with the thought that maybe Mo had held on until Lori came - that she'd needed a softhearted woman to make a fuss over her in her final days.
But that was crazy. As totally, completely nuts as Lori actually thinking she could be his farmhand.
He pushed away from the door. "Time to clean."
Chapter Four
Lori had never thought she'd need to call on her dance training to clean a toilet or make a bed, but in order to clean Grayson's house perfectly she'd