Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,40
actually, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
He’d never actually thought of doing it with someone.
Not until today.
Kinda crazy the way that thought had snuck up on him, slipped right through any defenses he might have put up, and settled with a sweet rightness down in his soul. Deep and good and just exactly what he wanted but hadn’t known.
The rain, which had been steady all afternoon, with bursts of heavier downpours, continued to pound on the metal barn roof. It echoed through the interior and made a sound that was at once relaxing and fun to work to. It made being alone with his thoughts pleasant.
He probably spent more time than he should have, but every time he thought he’d pack up and go back to the house, he’d see something else that needed to be done, something he’d neglected in the last two weeks.
He’d left his phone inside the house, and he wasn’t wearing a watch. But he knew he’d overstayed. Definitely the boys were probably up from their naps, and Poppy would be itching to leave.
He didn’t want to take advantage of her. Not really. He did, however, want to talk to her. He supposed he wasn’t going to get to it today since the boys were probably hungry and waiting impatiently on supper.
Maybe he could call her later.
The things he wanted to say, though, were really things he shouldn’t say over the phone.
They were the things a man said to a woman face-to-face.
He didn’t plan on declaring his undying love, exactly, but he wanted to say a few nice things to her. Wanted to see if they could lay a foundation for something a little deeper. Which was crazy, because it hadn’t been that long ago that he wouldn’t even have said that he liked her all that much.
Funny how the feelings he thought he felt weren’t what he was actually feeling.
He’d been told that men could be oblivious that way.
He hadn’t needed to experience it quite so dramatically in order to believe it.
What about your past?
Funny how his feelings could overrule his common sense.
He’d forgotten all about that.
Kinda crazy how Poppy could put things that he thought were so important clear out of his mind and make them insignificant next to how she made him feel.
Maybe, with a woman like Poppy, there might be a future for him.
Even a family.
He looked over at Warren, completely engrossed in the wheat, shifting it into a pile and making a road between piles.
Next time they came out, he was going to have to bring a truck or two out.
“Hey, bud, ready to go?” he asked over the pounding on the roof. Another cloudburst was coming down. Maybe they’d just mosey to the door and hope it lightened up a little before they had to walk to the house.
Run to the house.
“Can we take some of this into the house to play with? This is fun,” Warren said, moving his body a little but not taking his hands out of the wheat.
“No. It’ll make a mess in the house because it will go everywhere. We’ll come back out to play. Maybe we can pick out some toys that would stay out here that you can play with.”
“Really?”
He grinned at the surprised jubilation on Warren’s face.
“Really. I used to do that when I was a kid. I know it’s a lot of fun.”
“You did this?”
“Sure. I played in the wheat. That’s what that is. Wheat.”
“Wheat?” Warren stood and looked down at his feet.
“Sure is. It’s what flour is made out of. We use flour to make bread and cake and cookies and other stuff. You used it for your pancakes this morning.”
“We could take some of this and make pancakes out of it?” Warren bent over and scooped some wheat up, letting it sift through his fingers and fall back to the grain bin.
“Well, technically yeah, we could, but we need something to grind it with. And normally we send it away, they grind it, sift it, bleach it...” He didn’t add any commentary onto that. He didn’t want to overwhelm Warren with the idea that they pretty much took everything that was good in the wheat out and then put a bunch of artificial stuff back in it and called it flour. Another day. “And then we buy the flour in the store.”
“But we would have to go to the store then. You have eggs. We have wheat. We don’t need anything at the store.”
“Toys.”
“Oh yeah. We need to go