I'm so close to her I can smell her, the light scent of her perfume lingering in the air between us. Her lips are slightly parted as she looks up at me, and all I can think about is how much I want to bite that lower lip of hers. "Well, that's pretty much a fact, too," I say.
"You're an arrogant shit," she says. But she's smiling.
"Not arrogant," I say. "Accurate." I trail my finger underneath her jaw, tilting her head up toward me, and she doesn't pull away. Her eyelids close lightly, and she practically melts against me, she wants it so bad. Fuck, she's not the only one who wants it.
I tell myself that I should just turn away, tell myself that I shouldn't touch her. Except I'm drawn to her, and there's no way I can turn away.
I touch my lips lightly to hers, just grazing them and – an overhead light flicks on in the cidery.
Autumn jumps back away from me, like she's just been electrocuted.
"Autumn!" A woman calls, bustling into the room, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, her hair pushed up under a hair net. "Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were giving someone a tour."
Autumn clears her throat, and she's suddenly businesslike, her voice crisp. "Mary, this is Luke. He's going to be the new foreman."
Mary sticks out her hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Mary knows everything there is to know about the day to day operations in the cidery," Autumn says. If I didn't hear the slight waver at the end of Autumn's voice, I wouldn't think anything at all had just passed between us.
Well, aside from the fact that my dick is as hard as a fucking rock right now. Mary doesn't seem to notice, and Autumn is pointedly ignoring me.
"I don't know about being an expert," Mary says. "But if you have any questions, I'll be the person to ask. I can always find the answers to anything that's got to do with cider."
By the time Mary leaves, Autumn is back to being all business, asking me if I have any questions, thanking me for my observations about planting the orchard. That's how she says it too – thank you for your observations. She's formal again, as if she didn't just tell me to stop looking at her tits in the cidery.
At the front porch, she pauses and asks if I have any questions.
"Just one," I say. "Want to finish what we started?"
Shit, I just can't help myself.
Autumn's face colors and she clears her throat. "Nothing was started," she says. "So there's nothing to finish. I'll get your paperwork together so I can pay you. There are a few forms you need to fill out."
And just like that, she shuts down whatever the hell happened between us back in the cidery.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Autumn
Things are back to normal at the orchard. Olivia and I are back to our regular routine -- the routine we had last week before Luke Saint blew into this place, a perfect storm of arrogance and sex appeal and boyish charm.
Heavy emphasis on boyish, I remind myself. He's only twenty-four, ten years my junior. And that's a lifetime of difference, when you add a divorce and a toddler to the mix.
I mentally chastise myself for even thinking about him the way I did, there in the cidery, when he just barely, for a moment, touched his lips to mine. But for an entire week, he's been extremely professional. And so have I. There have been no more situations like the ones that happened in the cidery -- or in the kitchen, when Luke put his fingers to my wrist, traced his finger along my palm.
Even now, the thought of his touch sends a shiver up my spine. Damn it.
Okay, so I haven't exactly been back to my regular routine. But fantasizing about Luke at night with my vibrator doesn't mean I'm interested in him -- or that anything is going to happen between us.
Luke has actually been really helpful over the past week, more so than I anticipated. It's harvest time – my second harvest here – and that means it's chaos. But he's stepped in to manage with a surprising amount of skill, and has come to me with suggestions for changes in day-to-day operations in the orchard that have been insightful. He's not just a pretty face – which is all the more reason I should stop thinking about him like that.
"Are you heading into town?" Greta's voice jolts me out of my thoughts, and I glance at the payroll file on the computer that I've been staring at for the last twenty minutes. Olivia is with her, and I hold open my arms so she can come crashing into them.
"Oh, Liv-bug, I missed you so much," I tell her, even though I've only been working in the office for a few hours. I bury my nose in her and breathe in her baby scent. "Did you have a fun morning with Greta? Is it time for lunch with June and Stan and the baby?"
"Are you all set, Autumn?" Greta asks. "Do you need anything before I take off?"
On Wednesdays and Fridays, Greta takes classes down at the state college – she's working her way through school, part-time. And on Wednesdays, Olivia and I visit my neighbor June, and her kids. June runs a bed and breakfast just down the road. Her oldest child, Stan, is a year older than Olivia, and June just had a second child. June and her husband Cade basically adopted Olivia and I when we moved to West Bend. Now, they're closer to me than my own family is.