Rescued by the Farmer (5 page)

His hazel eyes twinkled with anticipation, and Bekah felt the barricade she’d built around herself start to wobble. She didn’t know how he’d done it, but this outgoing, bighearted country boy had somehow edged around her defenses and begun earning her trust. Out of harsh necessity, she didn’t give it easily, so her reaction to him was baffling, to say the least.

When the kitchen was back in order, he hopped down from the stool and angled her toward the door. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”

“I should get back to the center and make sure everyone’s okay. Sierra has to make a presentation in class tonight, so she left to polish her slide show.”

“A few more minutes won’t matter,” he assured her with a bright grin as he opened the door for her. “If you get in trouble, just tell her it was my fault. She’ll believe that.”

Mischief glinted in his eyes, and she couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, but it has to be quick.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, and she was surprised when he headed for the well-worn field road that led to the center. Instead of going in the front door of the clinic, he took her around back and paused by a door that looked as though it hadn’t been used in years. Oddly, the glass set into the weathered oak had been freshly cleaned, and new curtains hung across the window next to the door.

Drew dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a dull brass key, which he promptly held out to her.

Stunned by the implication, she reflexively shook her head and started backpedaling. “What did you do?”

“You need a place to stay,” he replied in a reasonable tone. “We need a night manager for this place. It’s a win-win.”

She couldn’t deny that, for her, the solution was ideal. Buried here on this farm in the middle of nowhere, she’d be impossible for anyone to find, even if they knew where to look. Beyond that, she already loved working at the center, caring for the animals who needed a little boost to get healthy enough to be adopted or returned to where they belonged.

Having been injured and grounded in her own way, Bekah felt a special kinship with the creatures who were biding their time until they were strong enough to be back on their own.

While she debated with herself, she noticed Drew watching her closely.
He must think I’m a complete loon
, she groaned silently. Hoping to prove him wrong, she shook off her reservations and summoned a grateful smile. “Is this where you’ve been disappearing to lately?”

“Yeah.”

“And getting scolded for skipping work at the farm?”

“Actually,” he confided with a charmingly crooked grin, “it wasn’t that bad. Mike growls a lot, but ever since he married Lily, he’s more teddy bear than grizzly.”

She doubted that, but it was nice of him to downplay the scolding he must have gotten from his older brother on her account. She couldn’t remember anyone ever going out on a limb like that for her, and his thoughtfulness touched her in a way that she hadn’t felt in ages. Since he’d gone to so much trouble for her, she figured the least she could do was view the result of his hard work. “Well, let’s see how it looks, and then we’ll go from there.”

He didn’t take the key from her or muscle past her to do the manly open-the-door routine. Instead, he let her unlock the old knob and enter the small space on her own. When it occurred to her that he intended to wait outside, she turned to him and asked, “Are you coming in?”

“Only if you like it.”

For all those rugged looks of his, he was a real sweetheart. The seeming contradiction actually suited him pretty well, she thought with a smile. Not to mention, it made him even more appealing to her. It seemed that there was more to this country boy than a quick smile and an easygoing personality. Despite her plan to keep some distance between them, she couldn’t help wondering just how much there was to discover about him.

She left the door open in a silent invitation, then walked into what appeared to be an old office with a small bathroom at the back. Although it was connected to the baby barn by a short walkway, the separate entrance offered some privacy, and the thick wall blocked out most of the noise. None of the furnishings were new, but the bedding and curtains looked freshly laundered, and a vintage refrigerator was humming away in the corner of the tiny kitchen.

For several seconds, she wasn’t sure how to react. When she realized he must be waiting for her to respond somehow, she said, “This is incredible.”

“You might want to hold your applause till I show you this.” He strode to the small kitchen sink, turned the cold handle and waited.

And waited.

After about ten seconds, a horrible moaning kicked in somewhere behind the wall, traveling up the pipes and into the faucet. As if that wasn’t disheartening enough, it was followed by a rust-colored trickle of water from the tap. The pressure gradually increased, and the water began flowing at a more normal rate.

“The bathroom fixtures aren’t any better right now, I’m afraid,” he told her. “I know it looks bad, but the water’s been off for a long time. I’m sure it’ll clear up soon. I ordered a new toilet, and Mom said you’re welcome to shower at the house until things are okay in here.”

Doing a slow pivot to take it all in, she stopped when she came around to Drew. “You did all this for me?”

“Well, cleaning’s not my favorite chore, but once I got started, it didn’t make sense to quit until everything was decent for you.” He gave her another one of those charming grins that he seemed to have quite a collection of. “Gotta admit I’m a little jealous. Your place is cleaner than mine.”

“I’m confused,” she confided with a frown. “Why would you go to so much trouble for someone you just met yesterday?”

“It seems like you need a place to land, and I wanted to give you one.”

“Why do you care?”

He started to answer, then grimaced and sighed. “I’m really not sure. It just felt like the right thing to do.”

“Do you always follow your gut like that?”

“Pretty much.”

That had never worked out well for her, so she’d stopped doing it long ago. But now, standing here with this man who’d taken it upon himself to help her, she was beginning to wonder if the problem wasn’t with her, after all. Maybe, she thought for the first time, it was the fault of the people who’d disappointed her so badly.

While she mulled that over, she noticed that he wasn’t trying to pressure her into gushing about his generosity, or even accepting it. Instead, he gazed at her with a patient expression that was simply amazing to someone who’d been pushed, goaded and manipulated into doing far too many things she should’ve had the good sense to refuse.

And because he was allowing her to choose for herself, her decision was an easy one.

“Thank you, Drew,” she finally said, smiling up at him in gratitude. “You did a great job, and I think I’ll be very comfortable living here.”

* * *

By the time Drew had finished the chores that had been piling up and showed his face in the hay barn that afternoon, Mike and Josh had stacked more than half of the small bales waiting to be tucked away in the overhead lofts.

“I know,” Drew said, stalling the expected dressing-down with both hands in the air. “I’ll work extra time tonight to make it up.”

His brothers exchanged a very male look and then, to his astonishment, started laughing like maniacs.

“Did I miss something?” Drew asked, perplexed by their attitude. Normally, going AWOL for hours on end was an invitation to a very unpleasant big-brother scolding, complete with folded arms and a heavy dose of scowls. For some reason, today it was hilarious.

“Josh,” Mike began, pointedly ignoring Drew, “when’s the last time you heard of Drew putting off one backbreaking job to take on another, even dirtier backbreaking job?”

“Well, now, let me see,” the youngest Kinley drawled, tapping his chin with a leather-gloved finger. When he was done stalling, he grinned at Drew. “I’m thinkin’ never. Then again, he didn’t meet Bekah till this week.”

“Very funny,” Drew grumbled. “Can we get to work now?”

Mike laughed at that. “Not just yet, Romeo. My wife pointed out something about Bekah after dinner last night, and I wanna run it past you.”

Lily had an uncanny set of instincts when it came to people, so Drew couldn’t resist hearing what his very intuitive sister-in-law had to say about Bekah. “Okay.”

“That girl out there,” he pointed in the general direction of the rescue center, “is running from something, and she needs a place to hide.” Crossing his arms, he pegged Drew with a stern, head-of-the-family kind of look. “How’m I doing so far?”

“I totally agree, which is why I had Harley do a quick check on her in the sheriff’s database. Nothing popped up.”

“That’s nuts,” Josh muttered with a dark look. “Anyone with eyes can see someone hit her not long ago. You mean to tell me she didn’t report it?”

“Some women never do,” Mike replied in a somber voice. “They’re afraid to make the guy even madder by getting the law involved.”

“Who could do that to a sweet woman like her?” Josh demanded.

“I don’t know,” Drew replied. “But he better pray that he never meets up with me.”

His brothers nodded in agreement, and he felt a rush of gratitude for their support. As Bekah had pointed out more than once, she was a stranger here in Oaks Crossing, and it would be easy for most folks to ignore what was right in front of their faces.

But not his family, Drew thought proudly. No matter how hard it might be for them, Kinleys always tried to do the right thing. In fact, he mused as he and Mike climbed into the hayloft, how hard something was usually told him that it was the right way to go. That was probably on a motivational plaque somewhere, but being a Kentucky farm boy, he’d learned it the way he learned most things.

The hard way.

Caught up in his mental wandering, he missed the bale that Josh tossed up to him, and it knocked him to the dusty floor near the edge of the hayloft. Glaring down at the wagon, he yelled, “Hey!”

“Sorry, man. You were lookin’ right at me, so I figured you were ready.”

They began to argue about what being “ready” to catch a seventy-pound bale of hay looked like, and Mike stepped in to restore some peace. “Drew, if you’re lost in space, take the rest of the day off and come back tomorrow. If you fall over the side and break your neck, Mom’ll kill me.”

“I’m fine,” Drew insisted stubbornly. “Josh caught me by surprise is all.”

That started another round of arguing, and finally Mike ended it. “Enough!”

Even though they were all grown up now, he and Josh never messed with their big brother when he yelled like that. It was his end-of-my-rope bellow, and he only hauled it out when he meant business. After a deep breath to cool a temper that could still be as bad as it had ever been, Mike ordered Josh to head back out to bale one more wagonload of hay and bring it in before dark.

When he was gone, Mike turned to Drew with a disgusted look. “You two have to figure out how to get along better. You’re driving me insane.”

“It’s his fault for being such a pain.”

“I’m gonna tell you what Dad used to tell me when I said that about you,” Mike shot back. “You’re older, and you should know better.”

“Aw, come on,” Drew whined. “I can’t help that I was born two years earlier than him.”

“If he was the older one, I’d be having this pointless conversation with him. Now, get down there and start tossing that hay up here before I send you out to dig ditches or something.”

“You’re all heart, big brother.” Grinning, Drew jumped from the loft down onto the top layer of hay. They’d been doing this kind of work most of their lives, and they quickly got into a rhythm that whittled down the wagonload and started filling in the blank spaces in the storage area above.

After they’d been at it for a while, they took a break for some water. Sitting on a bale down below, Drew looked up at his twice-married brother, who sat with his battered cowboy boots dangling over the loft’s edge. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“How did you go from being divorced and ‘never gonna get married again’ to proposing to Lily?”

“Faith.”

The answer came without hesitation, and Drew cocked his head in disbelief. “In what?”

“Oh, not mine,” he amended with a chuckle. “Lily’s. She saw past all my nonsense to who I really am and somehow liked what she found. The rest is a mystery to me, but it seems to work.”

“So, you’re saying you have no idea what changed your mind.”

“Pretty much.” After a swig of water, he added, “But I have to say, if it could happen to a jaded guy like me, it could probably happen to anyone.”

Drew had to admit, he had a point there. He’d lived his entire life in Oaks Crossing, so he hadn’t been kicked around by the world the way Mike had. But even though he’d had plenty of girlfriends and one near-miss in the down-the-aisle department, none of them had stuck. He was still baffled about why that was, especially since he dated sweet, uncomplicated women who’d gone on to marry one friend or another of his over the years.

Was the problem with them, or him?

This was one of those times that he really missed talking with his father. Dad had a knack for taking any problem and distilling it down into its most basic elements so he could help Drew figure out what to do.

“Go ahead,” Mike nudged quietly. “Ask me.”

Drew hesitated, then decided there was no harm in posing the question. “I’m really not all that picky. Why can’t I find what I’m looking for?”

“Who says you haven’t?”

Mike gave him a knowing look, and Drew groaned. “You can’t be serious. I just met Bekah.”

“What makes you think I was talking about Bekah?” When Drew glared at him, he grinned. “I could’ve been referring to any of the girls you’ve known, but you went right to her. What you have to ask yourself is, why?”

With that, Mike climbed to his feet, effectively declaring their philosophy lesson over. While they finished this load and Josh towed in the last one of the day, Drew had very little time to think about anything else.