and he clearly hadn’t seen her yet. She ogled him, because she could.
Trey Chappell was a glorious specimen of a man, and she waited for the guilt to hit her. It did, but only as a tiny splash, not the tsunami that had threatened to engulf her just last week. He was tall, with plenty of dark hair curling out from underneath his cowboy hat. When he looked at her, his eyes shone like her hardwood floor after she’d polished it, the dark, deep color of them like rich soil.
He always wore a shirt in some sort of plaid, usually in blue or green. Today’s had blue and green, with yellow in there too. Jeans. Big belt buckle. Cowboy boots.
He was perfection.
He crouched down with TJ, who pointed underneath the logs stacked against the shed there. The back lawn met the front of the shed, and the farmhouse sat beyond that.
Trey laughed, and Beth couldn’t help smiling. She didn’t think either of them would be once she talked to him about the Sweetheart Classic.
Her fingers twined around one another, and she pulled in a breath when he straightened and looked in her direction. A smile popped onto her face, but her feet shifted, betraying her nerves. Even if she wasn’t about to ask him to do something crazy, she’d be anxious about him being on her farm.
He’d asked her out, and she’d floundered it. She’d told him later that she meant to say yes, and he’d seemed so hopeful. Then he’d come, and she was sure he’d overheard her and her father talking about how she wasn’t sure she was ready to date.
He’d made up an excuse and left. Beth had been wondering what she was so afraid of ever since.
She hated change with the fierceness of a cornered alley cat. If someone had asked her five years ago what her future held, she wouldn’t have put widow in the fantasy. So much had changed with Danny’s death that Beth didn’t even recognize her life or herself inside it. The woman she’d once been had definitely died with her husband, on that lonely stretch of road where he never should’ve been.
“Hey, Beth.”
She pushed her dangerous thoughts away and focused on the man in front of her. “Thanks for coming, Trey.”
“Sure,” he said easily.
“I hope I’m not keeping you from your own chores.”
“Nah.” He reached up and pushed his hat back. “We’ve got people to cover ‘em today.” He smiled at her and reached for her hand. He paused, his skin only an inch from hers. Plenty of energy flowed from him to her, and Beth sure did like it.
“You can hold my hand,” she said.
Trey’s eyebrows went up. “Can I?”
“Yes.” She took his hand as it hovered there in front of his body, and an internal sigh moved through her. “I need help with the horses today, because they need to be inspected, and I can’t use both hands to look at their shoes.”
“All right,” Trey drawled. “Let’s do it.” He went with her into the barn, which had a row of stables down the left side.
Bluegrass had dedicated stables, with long row houses where the horses lived. Beth had five horses in this barn, and three stables which could house two dozen each. She didn’t have quite that many horses right now, but sometimes the farm operated at full capacity.
She boarded horses. She bred them. She sold them. She offered horseback riding lessons. She raised cattle. She did anything she had to do to pay the mortgage and keep the farm. That first summer after Danny’s death, she’d sold produce from a table at the Farmer’s Market in town.
She could still remember standing there, pure humiliation filling her as people walked by. She’d never felt so invisible. She’d never felt so desperate. She’d never gone back.
She plucked a binder from the shelf inside the barn. “How about you inspect, and I’ll make the notes?”
“Sure,” Trey said. Sometimes they argued, but usually only when Beth didn’t want him to do something. He’d claimed he’d love to have TJ follow him around Bluegrass, but Beth didn’t buy that for a second. She hadn’t let her son go next door and bother the cowboys there.
TJ seemed to do whatever he wanted though, and she’d first met Trey when he’d brought TJ home after finding him in the hay loft.
“All right, Buttercup,” Trey said as he unlatched the door. “I’m comin’ in.” He entered the stall, and Buttercup just stood there and looked