Billionaire's Second Chance (Billionaires #16) - Jennifer Hartley Page 0,31

the same torn jeans for three days in a row. And I joked around with Scott about his refusal to take my job offer so many times that it didn’t even occur to me that maybe one of the reasons he didn’t want to take it was because their farm was in such dire straits that he feared leaving Clara alone to try and dig out of it.

I had to do something about this. All of the years of my life, the Wiley’s and their farm had been my one safe place and my beacon of hope. Now, when they needed me in return, I vowed that I would do something about it.

I knew that Clara was too proud to ask for help. Things had to be really bad for her to have even asked to take a few things from the house. I knew that if I said something to her about it, she would get embarrassed and upset. So instead, I got up and went around the whole house, boxing up anything, and everything that I could find that I either thought they could use or that was of any substantial value. I didn’t even say anything to her; I just carried the boxes right out and put them into the car. Fortunately, we had sold enough at the market to make a lot of space in the trunk, and it was more like a pickup than a sedan, so I was able to fit a lot of stuff in there. When it had started to get dark, and there wasn’t a single inch of space left to fit anything, we got back into the car to drive back to the farm.

“Thank you,” she said softly as we pulled away.

“It’s me that should be thanking you for coming here with me,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. Besides, you don’t need to thank me for stuff that was just going to be given away anyway.”

“That’s not why I’m thanking you,” she said. “Thank you for not saying anything about it and for not judging the current state of our lives.”

I looked over at her as I sat in the driver’s seat with my stuffed dog in my lap and put my hand on hers. This time when I reached for her, she didn’t try to pull away her hand.

13

Clara

When I opened my eyes in the morning, I felt slower and lazier than usual. Also, the sun seemed to be glaring in through the window brighter than a normal morning. When I turned to look at the clock, I saw why that was. I leaped out of bed so quickly that I made those little sparkly stars appear in my vision from getting up too fast at once.

Holy shit, it was almost noon!

I had so much to get done, and I couldn’t believe half the day was gone already. I never overslept. I guessed maybe yesterday was a long day between the morning harvesting, the afternoon market, and then DeShawn’s house in the evening, then I had given it credit for. I could hear the guys talking and laughing downstairs and raced down in my pajamas without stopping to change. As soon as I got to the bottom of the steps, DeShawn turned around and stared at me with his jaw hanging open. I was used to it being only my brother and me here, and Scott didn’t pay any attention to my spaghetti-strapped nightgown and booty shorts. DeShawn, however—did.

“Why didn’t you guys wake me up?” I shouted at them both. Between the two of them, one of them should have at least been able to make sure I got out of bed before it was mid-afternoon.

DeShawn couldn’t take his eyes off me, not even when my brother noticed him staring.

“Hey,” Scott said as he slapped DeShawn across the chest to snap him out of it. “Put your eyes back in their sockets.” Then my brother turned to look at me. “You can blame DeShawn for not waking you up,” he said. “He came by to help out some more and convinced me to let you sleep. Something about the long day that you two had yesterday at the market. If it were up to me, I would have woken you up at the crack of dawn.”

Scott laughed, and I looked at DeShawn, who, despite my brother’s slap, was still unable to look away from me. It was actually really sweet that he