I could see his eyes now that he was closer, eyes as blue as the center of a flame.
Grant fucking Stone.
Grant fucking Stone with no shirt on. And those shorts on. And that thing between his legs.
I didn’t think he’d seen me. His eyes were fixed down the road, his concentration so deep, I wasn’t sure he was even on the planet.
His presence in front of my farm had to be for show. A joke. A ploy. Why else would he run by my driveway when he had twenty miles of nothing available to him in every direction? He was pretending not to see me—it was the only reasonable explanation.
With a mighty scowl, I popped my other earbud out and closed it with its twin in my fist.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled in his direction.
His face jerked toward me, colored in confusion. He glanced around like he didn’t know where he was, his stride slowing gracefully.
“What are you doing?” I said slower, though with no less accusation.
“Looks like the same thing you are,” he panted, hands on his hips like mine had just been.
“Don’t gimme that bullshit. I hope you’re not here to—”
“I went for a run, Jo,” he said darkly. “Not everything is about you.”
I jerked back, affronted. “Charming, really.”
He glared at me, chest heaving. “You’re mad if I’m nice to you and mad if I’m not. What do you want from me?”
“To be left alone.”
“Fine.” He picked up to start running again, leaving me with a strange feeling. Equal parts annoyance, rejection, and a bizarre sense of longing.
It must have been the elephant in his pants.
But rather than take it back, I put my nose in the air and stepped up to the mailbox to collect its contents.
His footfalls stopped behind me.
“Really?” he said. “That’s it?”
“You’re mad when I tell you how I feel and you’re mad when I don’t. What do you want from me?” I stacked mail into the crook of my arm with a little bit of violence.
A haughty laugh. “Whenever do you keep how you feel to yourself?”
I slammed the mailbox shut and turned on my heel to face him. “You think you’re privy to all my thoughts and feelings?”
“No, I just didn’t think you were capable of keeping anything to yourself.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re capable of telling the truth.”
“Because you know me so well.”
My eyes wanted to roam down his chest and lower, but I drilled my gaze into his eyeballs so they couldn’t. “I know all I need to. You want to come in and snatch what you can, then leave and never think about us again. You don’t realize that Lindenbach is a living creature, and you’re just a virus we caught.”
“A virus.”
“Yup. A greedy virus trying to suck the life out of our town.”
“That’s a little dramatic. I’m not going to ruin your town.”
“But you’ll ruin my farm without blinking.”
“I’m not going to ruin your farm either.”
“Damn right you’re not, because you’re not getting your fangs in it.”
He watched me for a moment, the massive discs of his pecs rising and falling and glistening and begging me to look. I didn’t. This was a big deal.
“I’m not going anywhere, Jo. You’re not going to run me off.”
A wicked smile brushed my lips. “Wanna make a bet?”
“I don’t take bets I know I’ll win. Takes all the fun out of it.”
I snorted a laugh. “Chicken.”
“You think I couldn’t possibly understand hard labor or living a modest life, is that it?”
That earned him a full-blown bout of laughter as I imagined him working land. “You wouldn’t last a day.”
Something came over him quietly, filled him with purpose and challenge that drew him a few inches taller, his broad shoulders stretching wider. His smile held a thousand promises, and I told myself I didn’t want a single one of them, even though I could think of five off the top of my head that he could convince me to take.
“Well, then—maybe I should learn. And since you seem to know everything, maybe you should be the one to teach me.”
I laughed again, hoping he didn’t catch the oh, shit my nerves sang beneath the sound. “I don’t have time to babysit you.”
“Chicken.”
“Am not.”
“Are too. Put your money where your mouth is, Blum.”
I assessed him a moment, considering how this could benefit me. The biggest draw was the thought of humiliating him—there was nothing I’d like more than to see him fail. There was also the newfound allure of the firehose between his legs that, although I’d never know biblically, I wouldn’t hate to catch the occasional glimpse of. Strictly for educational purposes, of course.
Because really, it wasn’t fair that he should be that hot, that rich, and that hung. It upset the balance of the universe.
He’d said I couldn’t run him off, but if I did this, that statement might change. He thought he could hang, but while his jock did all kinds of hanging, his constitution through the hell I could put him through had yet to be determined. And while I believed he was stubborn as all hell and would stick it out longer than any normal person would, I knew for a fact that I was more stubborn.
So I smiled. Narrowed my eyes. And said, “You’re on.”
And with a smile from him that told me he had no idea what he’d gotten himself into, he said, “Good.”
I turned for the driveway, not bothering to speak over my shoulder. “Lessons start in two hours. Wear something that can get dirty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As the gravel crunched and his pace picked up, he ran back in the direction of town, and I snuck one more glance just to see if the back of him was as cut as the rest. He was looking right at me with a knowing smirk that had me rolling my eyes.
But not before I found out the answer was yes.
8
Masochism As A Sport
GRANT
Water sluiced down my back, hitting the bottom of the clawfoot tub with a slap.
Absently, I wondered how many showers I’d take today. If Jo had her way, three wouldn’t be enough.
I smiled to myself, reaching for a bar of soap, considering the roaring hellcat, living her life offended by my presence while somehow managing to send me signals she’d deny until she was in the dirt. But I saw her. I saw it in the look on her face, in the roaming of her eyes, in the way I’d caught her sneaking a final glimpse of my ass as I ran away.
Now all I had to do was let her torture me.
Smiling wider, I wondered what she’d put me through first and decided I’d rather not know.
When I’d washed the layer of Texas sweat off of me, I turned the squeaky faucet until it closed and reached for a towel.
I hadn’t realized that I was in front of her place until she spoke. I’d been running blind, so deep in my thoughts that I wasn’t sure I was even still piloting my body. The heat, the tearing of my lungs, the burn of my muscles—it’d all been dim and distant until she called out to me. Had the tables been turned, I’d have assumed she’d done it on purpose too. And it would have been a great plan, if I’d intended to accidentally run into her.