“That’s the turn coming up on the right,” Leah said, pointing. “It’s just a narrow private road.”
“Yeah, I remember it now.” I looked over at her, and our eyes met. Obviously it wasn’t the only thing I remembered.
She glanced away.
Regardless, I saw her in my mind’s eye. That thin top and those silky white panties. I had a feeling that image of Leah hiding in the shadows was going to stay with me a long time.
“So, what is it you do?” I asked, trying to shake off last night’s mental picture. “Do you manage this farm alone?”
“I’m a spinster.”
“A what?” I glanced at her, figuring I must have misheard.
“Spinster,” she repeated.
She seemed serious. “I don’t think people use that term anymore.” I wondered if this was some kind of local thing. People in small towns were sometimes old-fashioned, but surely things weren’t that far behind in Truth Harbor. “You’re not really a spinster.”
“Of course I am. I enjoy it.”
I glanced at her again and wondered if Leah wasn’t playing with a full deck. She had recently thought I was a Sasquatch…. “You’re not old enough to be a spinster.”
“Sure I am.”
“Isn’t a spinster an old woman who’s never been married?” Damian asked from the back seat.
“I think so,” I replied.
And that’s when Leah grinned. She put her hand up. “I’m just messing with you guys. I love saying that.”
“What do you mean?” I parked my truck in front of her house next to a white one that must be hers.
She turned to us both. “A spinster used to be the term for a woman who spun wool into yarn. A lot of those women were unmarried, so that’s how the word’s meaning changed over time.”
“Is that right?” I stroked my beard. “I didn’t know that.”
Damian leaned forward eagerly. “So, you spin wool?”
She nodded. “I do. I’m a fiber artist, and I spin wool from my animals.”
“Wow, that’s so cool.”
“You’re an artist?” My beard stroking stopped. In the darkened cab I could just make out her features. There was a light perfume coming off her that I hadn’t noticed before, and I liked it.
She nodded. “I have a shop online where I sell my yarn, fleece, and some of my knitting too.”
I started to say, “That’s nice,” but what came out instead was “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
She didn’t respond and instead reached for the door handle. I got the sense she wanted to get away from me.
“See you Tuesday,” Damian called out as she climbed out of the truck.
“I’ll be here,” she said to him and then closed the passenger side.
My truck’s high beams shone on her as she walked over to the front porch, her dark ponytail swishing with each step. I tried to ignore how long and shapely her legs were. How good her ass looked in those shorts when she moved.
I forced myself to stop watching and studied her front porch instead.
My life was a mess of complications right now, and there was no room for romantic entanglements. The biggest complication being Charlotte—Damian’s mom and my ex-girlfriend.
Chapter Six
~Josh~
As soon as Leah opened the front door to her house, I put my truck in Reverse. She waved at us before going inside, and I felt Damian waving from the back seat.
“Do you really think she spins her own wool?” he asked as I pulled onto the main road.
“Sure. It makes sense why she keeps those alpacas and llamas.”
“That’s totally fucking awesome.”
I shook my head. “Don’t swear like that.”
“But everybody at the house does it. Why can’t I?”
“Because you’re a kid, and it’s not right.” I thought back to my own childhood, to the way my younger brother, Jeremy, and I swore all the time. We thought we sounded badass when all we really sounded was pathetic. My mom shouldn’t have allowed it. Except she basically let us run wild.
That was the hardest part about parenting Damian. I didn’t have a fallback. I couldn’t use my own childhood to guide me, and instead I’d had to learn everything brand-new.
He asked more about spinning wool as we drove back to the house. Damian was bright with a curious nature. He had a bold streak, too, something that could be good or bad depending on how it manifested.
Charlotte tucked him away in a boarding school in England, one her family approved of, and one for which they happily paid all the expenses. I told her I’d happily pay all the expenses to keep him out of it, but she couldn’t be deterred.
And now that she and I weren’t together anymore, I suspected she was glad he wasn’t around. He interfered too much with her lifestyle.
Luckily, he seemed to be doing just fine at the school. I’d been flying back and forth so I could be there during his breaks. Charlotte’s family had made noises about it at first, but they couldn’t deny that I was a father to Damian in every way that counted.
Blood or no blood.
“I can’t wait for Leah to show us her farm,” he said. “It’s so different from Granny’s.”
Charlotte’s mother, Philomena, lived in the English countryside and raised horses. She had a large stable and was part of the British peerage. I had to agree it was pretty different.
“Granny mostly has horses,” he continued. “Except for Winston.”
“Who’s Winston?”
“The goat.”
“Hmm, I must have missed that.”
“I can’t wait to go to Leah’s on Tuesday. Maybe she’ll even let us feed her animals.” He sounded excited.
I grinned to myself. The fact was Damian and I were a couple of city boys thrust into country living. “Maybe you’ll get lucky, Little D. She might even put you to work.”
Later that night, after Damian went to bed, I asked everyone if they could cool it with the swearing.
“No one in Damian’s family has admitted it out loud,” I said, poking a stick at the fire, “but this is a test that he’s staying with me this summer.”
“Sure, of course we will.” Dean eyed the group in his gruff way. He knew all about the situation with Charlotte and the adoption. “We’ll make sure everybody keeps their language nice and clean.”
“I appreciate it. I don’t want to send him back to England teaching people all the new curse words he’s learned.”
There were nods and chuckles of agreement.
Glancing around, I could see my houseguests were cozy and relaxed. Everybody gathered around the fire—most of them with romantic partners.
I was the lone wolf in the pack.
It had to be this way.
The house had plenty of bedrooms for everyone, and there was even a small guesthouse by the lake. It was one of the reasons I’d bought the place. Besides the secluded area, I was thinking about turning that guesthouse into a recording studio.
The air smelled like woodsmoke, and when I gazed up at the sky, there were more stars than I’d seen in a long time.