Defending Hearts (3 page)

—

G
retchen wasn’t surprised to see ham, scalloped potatoes and creamed corn on the table when she walked into the kitchen. Once Gram set her mind on a meal, she was rarely swayed. Earlier in the day Gretchen had been concerned her grandmother would get carried away making
“company” meals for Alex, but right now she was starving and it smelled delicious and she didn’t care.

Their new housemate came in from the living room as Gretchen was toeing off her boots, and he gave her a friendly smile. She returned it, feeling slightly awkward. She wasn’t emotionally demonstrative to begin with and had what Jen and Kelly called resting bitch face, so randomly smiling at people wasn’t really her thing.

“Sit down and dig in, Alex,” Gram said from the stove. “We don’t stand on ceremony around here.”

Gretchen watched as he gave her grandmother what the older woman would call a cheeky smile and shook his head. “I can wait for the ladies to sit.”

“I knew you were raised right.” Gram gave him an approving nod. “I knew your parents, of course, before they moved away. Well, your stepfather, though I knew your dad, too.”

Gretchen rolled up her sleeves and turned the faucet on to wash her hands. “You know everybody, Gram.”

“Most everybody, I guess.”

Once they were seated and served, Alex scooped some scalloped potato and ham onto his fork and took a bite. His eyes widened in appreciation, but he swallowed and wiped his lips before speaking. “This is delicious, Ida.”

Gram beamed. “Thank you. It’s one of my specialties.”

“I hope you didn’t go to any extra trouble for me.”

“Not at all. You’ll find farmer’s wives—or grandmothers, as the case may be—like putting hearty meals on the table.”

Gretchen was tempted to point out Gram hadn’t made scalloped potatoes in months, even though it was one of her favorite dishes, but she shoved food in her mouth and
chewed instead. She took after her grandfather in most ways, and that included treating meals as times to eat, not chitchat. But she didn’t mind listening to Gram and Alex make small talk about the cuisine in various places where he’d traveled.

Gretchen had never heard of half the places, but it sounded like he led a pretty exciting life. She wasn’t sure why he’d want to take pictures of the Eagles practicing when he’d documented protests outside the Sudanese embassy for a big magazine, but it wasn’t really her business as long as he paid his rent.

“What made you come back to Stewart Mills?” Gram asked, clearly not too worried about what was and what wasn’t their business.

“I was a little burned out from the travel,” Alex said. Gretchen looked up from her plate in time to see him give a casual shrug, despite the fact that his expression was slightly more introspective. “When I was here for Eagles Fest, I really felt like I was connecting again. With . . . I don’t know. With people. With my hometown. I have an apartment in Providence, but it’s mostly a place to keep my stuff and sleep once in a while. I was on an assignment and I was tired, and it seemed like a great idea to come back and try to recapture how I felt during the fund-raiser.”

“And you think doing a story about the town will make you some money while you’re here?” Gram asked.

“I hope so. It’s not just about the money, though. I was looking through the Eagles Fest photos before I made the decision to come back, and the emotion in them spoke to me. The story seemed unfinished, so I’m here to finish it.”

Gretchen stopped herself from snorting at
It’s not just
about the money
and scraped up the last of the scalloped potatoes on her plate. In her experience, people who said that had money to burn, and disposable income certainly wasn’t something she’d ever experienced.

She really hoped her grandmother wouldn’t take that as an opening to ask nosy questions about his finances. Not directly, of course, but in that friendly and curious way small-town folks had when it came to interrogating people.

But Gram was distracted by Alex’s almost empty plate. “There’s plenty enough for seconds, Alex. Just help yourself.”

He made a show of patting his very flat stomach. “One’s plenty, Ida. I don’t want to have to buy new pants while I’m here.”

Gretchen didn’t think he was in any danger of an expanding waistline anytime soon. He was tall and a big guy in general, but very fit. Of course, she wasn’t the one currently running her palm over his abdomen, but from where she was sitting, it all looked good. Really,
really
good.

Gram made a clucking sound with her tongue. “You need a wife to fix you good home-cooked meals.”

Alex froze just as his lips closed over his fork, and Gretchen might have laughed at his expression if she wasn’t expending all of her energy to keep herself from kicking her grandmother under the table. As soon as she got a minute alone with Gram, they were going to have to have a talk about boundaries.

After taking his time chewing and swallowing his food, Alex just plastered a polite smile on his face. “Maybe someday I’ll try marriage again, but not anytime soon.”

Gretchen almost groaned aloud. If he didn’t want to
share his whole life story over meals, he’d have to learn not to open the door like that.

“You’ve been married before?” Gram asked, and this time Gretchen did kick her under the table, though gently. It was more of a nudge, really.

“I was, but my traveling turned out to be more of an issue than we thought it would, and eventually we just went our separate ways.”

“Ah.” Gram nodded. “Sounds very amicable.”

Alex nodded, but there was something about the set of his jaw that made Gretchen think it hadn’t been as amicable at the time as he made it sound.

He set his fork across his empty plate and wiped his mouth on his napkin. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to take some pictures of the farm. Maybe follow you both around a little bit.”

Gretchen frowned. “I thought you wanted to photograph the high school team.”

“The football team is at the heart of this project, but I’d like to broaden the scope to include all of Stewart Mills. It was a town effort, saving the team.”

“There’s plenty of Stewart Mills out there without including our farm.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gram scowling in her direction and avoided full eye contact. Maybe she’d get lucky and, just this once, her grandmother would keep her opinions to herself.

“It would be good publicity,” Gram said, and Gretchen sighed.

“Gram, the people who buy our pumpkins live locally, and we can’t take in any more horses. What good would more publicity do for us?”

“Maybe more people will order sweaters from my online store.”

“Then he can take pictures of you knitting. There’s not much sense in him following me around while I’m trying to work.”

Alex cleared his throat and Gretchen realized with a guilty start that she was being rude. Not only was she talking about their guest as though he wasn’t in the room, but she was making him out to be a nuisance. And she didn’t see any way out of it without giving in. “Sorry. You can take pictures around the farm if you want.”

“I didn’t mean tomorrow. Once you get used to having me underfoot, we can see if you’re comfortable with it. Some people aren’t, and that’s okay.”

He really did have a great smile, and Gretchen forced her gaze back to her plate rather than risk losing herself in it and saying something stupid. Something like
You can follow me around as much as you want, and did you know the barn has a hayloft?

Conversation died away as they stood and set about clearing the table, much to Gretchen’s relief. It wouldn’t take long for Gram to find out anything she wanted to know about Alex, which would hopefully put an end to the awkward questions.

She had to admit a part of her was glad Gram wasn’t shy, though. Gretchen could satisfy her curiosity about their handsome houseguest while still maintaining a polite distance.

When Alex’s arm brushed against hers at the sink, it took every ounce of self-control she had not to jerk away. Standing so close to him made her feel not exactly dainty
or delicate, but soft and feminine, maybe. It wasn’t a feeling she was used to. He looked good, he smelled good and he was absolutely no good for her.

While she was at it, she should probably add “physical” to the list of distances she was keeping.

O
nce the kitchen had been cleaned up, Alex walked into the living room and laughed when Cocoa bounded up from a huge, flannel-covered cushion on the floor in the corner. She jogged across the room and nuzzled his hands, as though looking for something. When she didn’t find it, she started jabbing at his pants pockets with her nose.

“Cocoa!” Alex and the dog both whirled at the sound of Gretchen’s voice behind them. She was holding a dog biscuit in one hand and pointing at the Lab with the other. “Stop that.”

“She’s not bothering me,” Alex said, even as the dog dumped him like a bad date for the lady with the treat.

“We’re trying to teach her some manners.” After another stern look, Gretchen handed over the biscuit, which Cocoa
took back to her bed to enjoy. “We finally taught her she can’t be in the kitchen while we eat, but basic manners are still a struggle.”

“Being goofy and friendly and enthusiastic are a Lab’s best qualities.”

“I agree, but that doesn’t mean she can be nosing around in your . . . uh, pockets.” She took a deep breath. “I feel like I should apologize for Gram, too.”

“Pretty sure she hadn’t nosed around in my pockets.”

That got a quick smile out of her. “No, but she’s managed to nose around in almost every part of your life and it hasn’t even been a full day yet.”

Alex tried to look over her shoulder to make sure Ida wasn’t listening, but Gretchen was a tall woman and he couldn’t see much of the kitchen.

“She went out to work in the vegetable garden for a while.”

“Oh. Does she need any help?”

“No, she doesn’t. If she did, I’d be out there helping her.”

The words would have come off as defensive from most people, but Gretchen said them in such a matter-of-fact tone that Alex knew it was just the way she was wired. If something needed doing, she wouldn’t be standing around talking to him. She’d be doing it.

“Okay. And Ida’s questions don’t bother me. There’s nothing about my life I need to hide from anybody, and it’s just conversation.” Not that talking about his weight or his ex-wife would ever be his first choice for conversation, but Ida meant well and they were pretty standard getting-to-know-you questions, really.

Cocoa must have finished her biscuit, because she walked over to lean against his leg. Alex smiled down at her and
scratched behind her ears. Tilting her head up, she gave him a look that could only be described as adoring, and he felt a pang of regret that his job didn’t allow him to have a dog.

No wife. No dog. No place he couldn’t go without having to make do with only what fit in his carry-on bag. It was a lot easier for a guy to travel when he didn’t have any checked baggage.

“Okay.” Gretchen stood there just long enough for the silence to grow awkward. “Well, I’m going to go . . . do stuff. Feel free to watch television or whatever. We don’t watch it very much, so don’t worry about what’s on.”

“Okay, thanks. And I have stuff, too.” He had no idea
what
stuff, but he’d find something to do.

“Come on, Cocoa.”

The Lab looked up at him before raising her paw. Alex gave her a high five and then watched her follow Gretchen through the kitchen and out the back door. Once it was closed, he let out a long breath and walked to the sofa to sit down. He should go upstairs and get some work done. Maybe start outlining what he wanted to say about Stewart Mills so he could come up with a game plan for the photography.

In this case, though, he preferred to ease into the project. He had the time to simply wander and see what caught his eye or connected with him emotionally. He was a decent writer, but photographs were how he best told a story.

He was also tired and wanted to relax. While staying in every kind of lodging imaginable over the years—including a hole hidden under floorboards when he’d pissed off a drug lord in Central America by taking his picture—had made him pretty adaptable, staying with a family in their home could be the most taxing.

There wasn’t even a guy in the household he could make guy talk with to put everybody at ease. Just two women who were set in their ways and not used to having a man around anymore. And Cocoa. She seemed to like him.

A framed photo on the wall opposite him caught his eye and he smiled. It was a very young Gretchen, posing with an older man Alex assumed was her grandfather in front of a beat-up old truck. She’d been serious even then, he thought, looking at her young face. Not that she looked unhappy. She was just quiet.

He wondered if it was just in her nature, or if there was a reason she didn’t smile for the camera. He would have guessed environment, since her grandfather had the same reserved expression as Gretchen in the photo, but Ida was warm and open and definitely didn’t hold back on the smiling.

Looking around the room, he saw another photo of her grandfather with a truck—this one shiny and possibly new—in a small stand-up frame on the desk next to the computer. But there was no Gretchen in that picture, and the man was scowling. In the background, Alex could make out part of the barn and a couple of cows watching him over the fence. Looking back and forth between the two, he couldn’t tell which photograph was newer. Her grandfather looked the same age in both pictures, though the trucks certainly didn’t.

Rather than sit and ponder the mystery of Gretchen, her grandfather and his trucks, Alex slipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up his email account. He’d already talked to his agent about the Stewart Mills project—which
had received a lukewarm
we’ll wait and see
reception—and about going off the grid for a short break, so there was nothing much going on in his inbox. He had a stockpile of links to articles he’d been saving to read later, but his tablet was upstairs and he didn’t feel like reading on the small screen.

After a few minutes, he decided to go upstairs and open his laptop. It was tempting to head outside and see what the women were doing, but he wanted to give them some time alone. While Ida didn’t seem fazed by his presence, he could tell it was strange for Gretchen, so he’d let them have a break. She’d get used to him eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

He was flipping through the digital edition of a magazine that featured some of his photos in an article about the preservation of castle ruins around the United Kingdom when he heard footsteps outside in the hall. Based on which door opened and closed, and Cocoa’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor, it seemed Ida liked to go to bed early.

Pulled out of his work, Alex thought about going downstairs for a snack, but he decided to lie low until he’d gotten a feel for their nightly routine. Instead, he grabbed a granola bar and a bottle of water from his stash and settled back into his reading.

When he heard Gretchen walk by about an hour and a half later, he stripped down to his boxer briefs and went into his bathroom. This was obviously a household that embraced the “early to bed and early to rise” philosophy, and he was going to do his best to fit in.

Once he was between the sheets, which felt crisp and new for him, he closed his eyes. Instantly, his mind wanted
to spend some time on the way Gretchen’s blue eyes had looked across the dinner table from him, but Alex had too many years of experience trying to sleep in strange places or at odd times to give in and let his imagination run free.

He imagined standing on the edge of a rocky beach, watching the rough waves roll in. Forcing himself to focus only on the sound of them breaking, he lost himself in the stormy ocean and was asleep within minutes.

—

G
retchen woke up the next morning feeling uncharacteristically groggy and cranky, and it was all Alex Murphy’s fault.

Even when she was a little girl, she’d had chores before school, so she’d quickly learned one of the golden rules of living on a farm—go to sleep when your head hits the pillow so you can get up early and be ready to work.

But last night she hadn’t gone to sleep when her head hit the pillow. She hadn’t gone to sleep
an hour
after her head hit the pillow. Of course there had been nights when she didn’t fall asleep immediately—like when Gramps died or when she’d been racking her brain to come up with ways for the farm to earn income—but she’d never tossed and turned for hours thinking about a man.

It probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was also the first time she’d ever been attracted to a man whom it would be a really bad idea to sleep with. She didn’t have a lot of trouble finding male companionship when she was in the mood for it, but Alex was different. He was paying to live in her house, for one thing, so things could get messy.

But mostly he was different because he made
her
feel
different. As a rule, if she felt a sexual attraction to a man and things worked out, she acted on it. But Alex’s smile made her feel jittery, as though she’d had too much coffee and not enough food. And she felt awkward around him, which was new since she wasn’t in the habit of really giving a damn what people thought of her.

So she’d lain awake and tried not to think about his smile or how wide his shoulders were or how very strong and capable looking his hands were. She didn’t remember what she’d dreamed about when she finally slept, but she’d woken feeling restless and out of sorts.

What she needed was some good hard physical labor. Today she was going to work herself so long and so hard, she’d be lucky if she remembered to take her clothes off before she crawled into bed. If her body ached tonight, it would be due to the hard work, not because she desperately wanted the touch of a guy she barely knew.

With a plan in place to prevent a repeat performance of the restless insomnia, Gretchen got out of bed and stretched. Then she quickly, and not very neatly, made her bed before grabbing her clothes for the day. Sharing a bathroom was more of a nuisance than she’d anticipated, but at least she wasn’t sharing the bathroom with Alex, too.

She opened her door and stepped out into the hallway, where she almost ran into Alex. Instinctively, she clutched her bundle of clothes to her chest, hoping to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Uh . . . hi.”

“Good morning.” His voice was still husky from sleep, and Gretchen tried—and failed—not to imagine him saying her name in just that tone. “Ida asked me to come and see if you were up.”

Mortification made her want to step back into her room and slam the door in his face. “You can’t be serious.”

“She said you never sleep past six and she’s worried you might be sick.”

Or she might just be exhausted from staying up half the night fantasizing about the man standing in front of her. “I’m not sick. You can tell her I’ll be down in a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

He gave her an odd look. “Why would I mind?”

“She shouldn’t be asking you to do stuff for her.”

“About that.” He leaned against the wall, folding his arms, and Gretchen sighed. Having a discussion in the hallway before clothes and coffee wasn’t improving her morning any. “I really appreciate that you’re trying to set boundaries since I’m paying rent to be here. Maybe some people would be put off by some of Ida’s questions or being sent to drag a sleepyhead down to breakfast, but I truly don’t mind. I like her and I feel pretty at home with her.”

Gretchen guessed the underlying implication there was that if she’d just relax, he could feel at home with her, too. There were distances to be maintained, though, so she simply gave him a sharp nod. “Wonderful. Since you’re so comfortable with her, I guess you can tell her if she gets too nosy.”

He looked slightly amused, though she couldn’t imagine what she’d said that was funny. Unless he was trying not to laugh at her hair. Or the cows on her flannel sleep pants, which had been a gift from Kelly at least half a decade ago.

“Yeah,” he said, standing up straight again. “I’m going to go drink my coffee now, and maybe yours, too, if you take too long.”

She almost laughed, but managed to give him a stern look instead. “I’ve got a lot of acreage and a backhoe attachment for my tractor. You don’t want to touch my coffee.”

He turned and walked back toward the stairs, but she could hear him chuckling as she closed the bathroom door. And fifteen minutes later, when she’d given Cocoa some love and then walked into the kitchen, he just smiled and poured coffee into her favorite mug before setting it at her place at the table.

“Thank you,” she said, pulling out her chair and sitting down.

“Please tell me she doesn’t cook like this every morning,” he said from across the table, which was covered with a mountain of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and fruit.

“A body needs fuel to get through the day,” Gretchen said.

She could still remember the first time her grandfather said those words to her. It had been her first morning with her grandparents, and she’d been confused by the bounty of food on the table and asked for the sugary cereal she usually ate dry out of a plastic baggie. Gram had started fussing over her, but Gramps had simply pointed at the food and told her to eat. She ate.

“A body’s going to need some big plans to burn all this off,” Alex said, spooning some scrambled eggs onto his plate.

Gretchen paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “I plan to work.”

Gram chuckled as she set a mason jar of homemade strawberry jam on the table and sat down. “Gretchen doesn’t like to talk much over breakfast. She’s usually working out in her mind what she needs to get done for the day.”

“Fair enough. This looks too delicious to let get cold, anyway.”

Gretchen frowned at her plate. Her grandmother was right, but hearing herself described out loud like that made Gretchen want to wince. She was damn proud of being
like
her grandfather, but she didn’t actually want to
be
him. She was too young to turn into an old man, for goodness’ sake.

“Do you have any plans today?” she asked Alex after taking a bracing gulp of strong, black coffee.

He looked surprised for a second, since he’d just been told she didn’t like breakfast conversation, but then he nodded. “I’m heading over to see Coach in a little while. Then I’ll probably wander around for a bit. I might hit the library and see if I can poke around the archives for some background history.”