into it, and dumped grain into the last two horses’ buckets. Then she turned to Luke. “I’ll take you back to the office. Freddie Jo will show you the caretaker’s apartment and tell you the rules.”
“Rules? Hmm. This is the first I’ve heard of rules.”
“If they’re too strict for you, no problem. You don’t have to work here.”
“I just remembered. I love rules.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t give me a reason to regret this.”
A lazy smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, you won’t regret it. Trust me on that.”
Yes, it was a smile, but there was nothing warm or sociable about it. What she saw now was just a grown-up version of the boy who had been at war with this town, with eyes that let no one inside. There had been a time when she was sure she’d discovered a kindness and compassion in him that no one else had ever seen, but now it felt like a dream she’d once had that bore no resemblance to reality.
Then all at once, something nagged at her conscience. She wondered if she should say something. Probably not. But guilt drove her to do it, anyway.
“Luke? There was something I didn’t say before, and I should have.”
He gave her a cocky smile. “What’s that? ‘Welcome to Paradise’?”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
His smile evaporated, and he averted his gaze. “Then that makes one of us.”
“Luke—”
“I hear you. You’re sorry. And from now on, you can consider that topic off limits.”
He folded his arms and turned away. Shannon couldn’t imagine what turbulence a man would carry inside when he had a father like Glenn Dawson, so she couldn’t really blame him for feeling the way he did.
Fortunately, he seemed no more inclined to talk about the past than she did, which was fine by her. What had happened between them was over and done with. He could work there, give her the temporary help she needed, and then he’d be gone.
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Nothing with Luke had ever been simple. And not only would he be working there, he’d be living there. For a moment she imagined what it was going to be like to come to work every morning and see Luke coming out of his apartment, looking even more tempting than he had all those years ago.
Good Lord. Why the hell had she hired him?
Because his persistence knew no bounds. Because Freddie Jo wanted her to. Because if she didn’t get help soon, she was going to hit the end of her rope. Still, no matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made a very big mistake.
Luke followed Shannon back up the path toward the office, his knee throbbing. Yeah, he talked a good game, pushing hard for the job he didn’t want but sure as hell needed, but what she didn’t know was just how much it shook him up to see her again. It had been one thing to run into her in Rosie’s. But in that barn…
He remembered one day when he’d first gone to work there that summer eleven years ago. She’d had an Appaloosa gelding cross-tied in the center walkway, cleaning his hooves. When Luke came into the barn, she was bent over with the horse’s hoof between her knees, and he’d gotten the most spectacular view of her ass that any high school boy could possibly have hoped for.
“Getting an eyeful back there, Dawson?” she’d asked him, jabbing at the horse’s hoof with the hoof pick.
“Oh, yeah,” he’d said with his usual cocky tone. “In fact, think I’ll have a seat right here on this bench and watch the show.”
“How about you come over here and do this, and I’ll watch your ass?”
“That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as me watching yours.”
She dropped the horse’s hoof and turned around, her gaze slithering down his body and back up again, lingering in all the appropriate places.
“Maybe for you it wouldn’t be,” she said.
To this day he remembered the shiver of sexual awareness he’d felt as she spoke those words. Other girls had been intimidated by him. In awe of him. Scared of him, even. Not Shannon. She gave as good as she got.
After her remark, she’d pulled a pair of wire cutters from her pocket and tossed them to him. “Now, clip open a couple of bales of hay and let’s get these horses fed.”
That had been Shannon, through and through. If there was a job to do, she did it.