Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,39
of a glower. Even that wasn’t intimidating.
He looked good.
And she had a name for the feeling that buzzed through her chest.
Attraction.
Seeing him there, holding the baby, had made her long for something she had never wanted before. A family of her own.
That way lay danger.
He shifted, pushing up against the doorway, and his biceps contracted, stretching his T-shirt sleeves.
“I told you I would watch the children so you could go outside.” Her eyes tore away from his and looked out the window, where the rain had been pouring down all morning. At least, she hadn’t noticed if it stopped or slowed at all. She couldn’t recall the last time it had rained that hard for that long. “If you’d like to go out now, I can take the baby.”
“I said I wanted to talk to you.” His gaze dropped just for a fraction of a second, and it made her feel like he wasn’t as confident as he looked. “Is now a good time?”
“Why don’t you go outside and do what you need to do, and if you still have something to say to me, you can do it when you come in. In the meantime, I might not stay for supper, but I’ll make sure that you have something to eat and feed the children.”
He nodded. “I was gonna suggest you go. It’s not snowing, but they’re calling for it.”
“I think I’m good until this evening. I heard it wouldn’t change over until after dark.”
He nodded. “I just don’t want you to end up stuck here.”
Right. He could barely stand her. “Having me stuck with you would be about the worst thing that could ever happen.” She tilted her head and called up a cute grin. “Maybe not quite as bad as all of a sudden having four small children you need to care for.”
His face lightened, although he didn’t smile. “Or having an entire roll of toilet paper unrolled and stuffed into the toilet. Or cleaning poop off six pairs of underwear, or staying up the entire night with the baby who wants to do nothing but sleep during the day.” He lifted a shoulder. “Two weeks ago, that might have seemed bad, but now, being stuck with you... I think I might enjoy it.”
She couldn’t give him a sassy look now. Not with her brows shooting up to her forehead.
She knew what he was saying, but also his tone said something else, something nicer, something she wanted to hear, but she tried hard not to take the meaning that she wanted instead of the meaning that he meant.
“I guess I’ll take the baby.” She started forward and held her arms out, willing herself to act the way she always had around West and to ignore the crazy things she was thinking and feeling.
It seemed impossible but also seemed extremely dangerous for him to find out what she had just recently discovered.
She was attracted to him.
Chapter 14
West put the last fifty-pound sack of feed on the pile and slapped it to flatten it out.
His back hurt, his shoulders ached, and he had the bone-deep weariness that a person got after doing manual labor all day.
He loved that feeling. The feeling like he’d accomplished something that day. The feeling like he’d worked and used his body for good. The feeling like there was a place to put his supper, because he’d worked off his dinner.
He grinned because there was actually going to be a supper. One that he wasn’t going to have to cook.
He looked around, and Warren was still playing in the last of the spring wheat. The little bit that was left in the grain bin.
He remembered as a kid loving to sit in the grain bin and run that soft, silky wheat through his fingers. Even more fun was to bring his toy trucks out and load them up and haul the grain around. He and his brothers had spent hours in the grain bin doing that.
They got in trouble more than once for spreading the wheat around the barn floor. They finally figured out they needed to clean up after themselves if they wanted to do it, and he’d been embarrassingly too old to play with trucks before they finally stopped.
That had been on his grandparents’ farm, and maybe he hadn’t stopped because he’d gotten too old. He’d stopped because they’d sold the farm.
The farming had never left his blood, and even though he figured he’d probably never be rich, knew it for a fact