Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

“Good afternoon! I’m Geoffrey—Geoffrey Churnley—and I’m from the other side of the field, Elmcreek Farm. Are you our new neighbors?”

The taller man’s slate eyes rested on Mr. Churnley, and he nodded. “Not exactly, sir. We are here to work.” His low voice rumbled up from the depths of his chest, and it was… definitely not Texan. I couldn’t put my finger on what the accent was exactly. It was neutral and clear but had a slight foreign twang, almost British but… not. I wasn’t great at discerning accents anyway, given how little I’d traveled. Maybe he was an immigrant.

“Oh, I see,” Mr. Churnley replied. “And what sort of work are you doing here?”

“We’ve been hired to renovate the old farmhouse within this patch of woodland,” the man replied, his expression stoic and his eyes wandering casually to the fence. “We won’t be staying long.”

“Is the owner planning to move here, then?” Mr. Churnley asked.

The man shrugged, still avoiding direct eye contact. “We wouldn’t know, sir. We’re simply here to do a job.”

“Aha, naturally,” Mr. Churnley murmured, squinting in the sunlight as he took in the length of the fence. “You sure put this up quick.”

The man gave him a faint, perfunctory smile that told me he was quite done with the conversation. It seemed Mr. Churnley picked up on it too.

With the three of them working together, I guessed it was possible to put up a fence that fast—especially with a team as fit as this one. Not that I had any experience putting up fences…

“Well, thanks for your time,” Mr. Churnley said. “We’ll—”

“Um, one moment, if you don’t mind,” I interjected, not quite prepared to leave these guys yet. Mr. Churnley seemed to have forgotten what I considered to be the most important question.

I set my eyes on the taller man, who was now looking right at me. Focusing on my train of thought became suddenly way harder than it should have been. “I, uh—we had a break-in last night,” I explained, furrowing my brow and shifting my attention to the other two men. “Someone came in through the front door and… didn’t really take anything of value, but it was quite worrying. I guess this is a long shot, but I wondered if you’d seen anyone or anything out of the ordinary in the past day or two?”

I dared return my gaze to the taller man, and his dark brows drew together in a frown.

Then he shrugged, and responded with a single word: “No.”

“Right, okay.” I felt myself flush slightly, and exchanged a quick glance with Angie and Lauren, who looked like they didn’t know what to make of the situation. Which was basically how I felt.

I hadn’t been able to see much of the intruder last night, but the one impression I had been left with was that he was male and he was tall. How tall, I couldn’t pinpoint—it had all happened so fast—but it was probably stupid to suspect these guys. Millions of men fit that descriptor, and from the looks on these men’s faces, they really just wanted to get on with their work and get out of the heat. I couldn’t imagine why they’d bother to break into an old shack to steal a… wing.

Honestly, I was beginning to think we might just have to lay this whole incident to rest as some unexplained mystery in our lives. Something so bizarre that there probably was some funny and complicated explanation for it, but one we’d likely never unravel. As long as the guy didn’t come back, it really didn’t matter.

After spending more than half the night talking about it, I was kind of done with the subject anyway.

“Well, we’ll leave you to it,” Mr. Churnley said courteously, nodding and backing away toward the truck. “Good luck with the renovation, and if you need anything, give us a yell! Happy to help.”

“Thank you,” the tall man murmured. His eyes passed over me one last time before he turned his attention back to the fence, his two companions swiftly following suit.

Lauren, Angie, and I returned to the vehicle, and seated ourselves all in the back seat. Angie harrumphed as Mr. Churnley turned the car around and we began rolling in the opposite direction.

“Well, that was… interesting, I guess,” she said, her gaze taking on a dreamy quality as she stared out ahead through the windshield. “They sure were fine. Could any of you make out that accent?”

I shook my head, and so did Lauren. They hadn’t traveled that much abroad, either.

“You said you saw four guys yesterday, didn’t you?” Lauren asked, rubbing her forehead and looking befuddled.

“Yeah,” Angie replied. “I guess he must be in the enclosure somewhere.”

I heaved a sigh as the Churnleys’ farmhouse came into view, replaying the brief encounter we’d just had over in my head. The timing of everything was definitely odd—how the first break-in the Churnleys had ever had coincided with these workers arriving here, and—

I caught myself before I could venture further down that rabbit hole, reminding myself that it was pointless and would probably end up giving me a headache if I dwelled on it much longer.

It was all a coincidence, I simply reaffirmed to myself. Just an odd coincidence…





Chapter Five





I managed to avoid thinking about the wing incident for the rest of the day, though it was hard to get the lumberjacks completely out of my head, partly because of just how damn good looking they’d been, but also because the noises they were making back in their enclosure echoed over to our land throughout the rest of the day. It sounded like they’d finished putting up the fence—the banging and chopping of wood had stopped—and they’d started shoveling something, perhaps rocks or cement, or upturning the ground itself.

We didn’t talk much more about them, though, after our visit, and generally tried to distract ourselves with other things—which Mrs. Churnley made fairly easy, once she’d doled out our tasks for the day.

We set to work digging out weeds from the vegetable patch and then we took the dogs out for a stroll, walking them in the opposite direction of the woods, until we spotted Mr. Doherty’s farmhouse. The old man was sitting out on his porch and noticed us before we could turn back, so what had started out as a short stroll ended up as a rather long outing, by the time we’d had tea with him and his wife. They were both exceptionally friendly, and due to the day’s high temperature, much to Lauren’s dismay, we were given ample opportunity to verify Mrs. Churnley’s statement about the curly white chest hairs.

Once we managed to extricate ourselves, we headed back, and by the time we’d helped with some vegetable peeling and laundry hanging, the sun was already setting.