said more than once. Not the underwear thing, the crazy part. And they were crazy, not because they were psychics and potion makers and ghost whisperers, but because they couldn’t pretend to be normal. They drove me crazy, too. But they were my family. Only I was allowed to call them nuts, not this stranger who didn’t even know me. Us, I mean.
“Look, you.” Anger burned off my facade of calm, and I poked my finger at his chest, near but not quite touching, because he was bigger than me and I was new at this. I didn’t yell at people. I was snide, sometimes bitchy, but I’d never gone rubber toe to cowboy boot with a guy and glared right into his steely blue eyes, so close I could see the darker blue flecks in the irises and feel the heat of his—wow, really nicely muscled—chest through his thin undershirt. Not just in my jabbing finger but my whole body, the parts of me that were covered and the parts of me that weren’t.
Damn.
Focus, Amy. He might not be an axe murderer, but he was definitely an asshole.
“I don’t care who you are,” I said, pushing aside all those distractions. “If Aunt Hyacinth won’t sell to you, it’s for a good reason. Maybe it’s because this ‘us’ you speak of are all as nasty as you.”
“Is that so?” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and shifted his weight so that somehow, without really moving, he was suddenly looming over me, as if he could tell how much that bothered me. I didn’t budge, just set my teeth against the urge to either step back or kick him in the shin. “Since I’m so nasty,” he drawled, “next time I’ll just leave you to round up your goats alone.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I snapped, “because I’m going to chop down that blasted tree.”
“Tree?” His brows shot down in confusion. “What the hell are you going on about now?”
“The goats!” I said, like he was an idiot.
If possible, he scowled even more deeply. “What does the tree have to do with it?”
“The fence!” I flapped a hand toward the pen, losing the battle for simple coherence. “They climb the tree and go over the fence.”
He eased his weight back and peered down his nose at me. “You have some very strange ideas about livestock.”
“Oh my God.” I dug my dirty fingers into my hair. “Why are we talking about my stupid goats at all?”
“I don’t know,” he said, more infuriatingly calm the angrier I got. “I just thought maybe you wanted to say thank you for helping you round them up.”
Despite the frustration burning my ears, I still felt a rush of shamed heat. Gritting my teeth, I forced a chill into my tone to hide that last degree of mortification. “Thank you,” I choked, “for rounding up my goats …”
I trailed off where I would have coldly put his name, if I’d known it. Downright smug at my forced gratitude, he supplied the belated introduction. “Ben.” He neglected to offer a handshake. “Ben McCulloch.”
“Great, now round up your cows and get off the Goodnight property, Ben McCulloch.”
His fingers tightened on his belt, self-satisfaction vanishing. “Fine. And you just keep away from McCulloch property, Underwear Girl.”
“Can’t think why I’d want to go there,” I said, lifting my chin and arching my brows.
Hand on the gate, he said with matching disdain, “I don’t know. To return my shirt, maybe? I’d ask for it back, but I’m a gentleman.”
Past embarrassment, I shucked off the garment in question with reckless fury and threw it at him. Of course, he caught it easily. “Thank you for the loan,” I said. “See you on the other side of never.”
“Here’s hoping that’s true.” Shirt balled in his fist, he slammed the gate, so hard the whole fence wobbled. The horse had been placidly cropping grass, and looked resigned when Mr. Personality swung onto his back and kicked him into a canter. It was a matinee western move that would have impressed me if I hadn’t completely, irrationally, irrevocably hated the guy’s guts.
3
in the shower, I soaped my hair with a minty green shampoo from the collection on the shelf, letting the hot water carry away my anger so I could figure out at what point I had totally lost my mind.
Sure, Ben McCulloch had been a jerk (other than lending me his shirt and helping me round up the goats, I mean). But you