"No, I followed you in here to tell you that you need a new foreman." Shit, this girl has a bug up her ass. She needs to mellow the hell out. "Your foreman is a deadbeat. Not just because he lit your orchard on fire in the middle of harvest."
She practically bristles at my words. "If you came in here to give me a lecture, you can turn your rear end around and leave now," she says. "I'm not some stupid little city girl who doesn't know anything about running an orchard."
Irritation rushes through me. "I didn't say you were ‘some stupid little city girl’, lady, so don't get your panties ruffled. Hell, obviously you're not. I can hear the drawl in your voice." Drawl, hell. The girl sounds more southern than fried chicken. I just can't tell what part of the south she's from. But I definitely didn't get the impression that she was some city slicker.
Her face reddens like she's embarrassed to be mistaken for a country girl. I don't know what she has to be embarrassed about, though. That drawl of hers is pure sex. "Well, thanks for your advice," she says, "but I don't need a lecture from some… surfer dude."
"Surfer dude? What the hell do I–"
The knock on the door interrupts me. She looks at the door and then back at her kid. She obviously doesn't want to answer the door and leave me alone in the same room with her child.
"Don't worry about it,” I assure her. “I'll get it. And I'll show myself out."
One of the volunteer firefighters is at the front door. I used to know him in high school, and he raises his eyebrows when he looks at me.
"Don't even start," I mumble as I push past him.
"I didn't say a word," says Roger, putting his hands up as he chuckles.
"She's not my type."
"Huh. I thought every girl was your type."
"Shit." I shake my head. "Definitely not that one, man. Uptight is not my type."
He clears his throat and I glance behind me to see her with her kid balanced on her hip and walking up to us. I know she just overheard me. My cheeks feel red at the thought, but I shake it off.
Fuck it. What the hell do I care what this chick thinks anyway?
"Nice work out there, Luke," Roger calls, and I wave him off as I head back toward my truck, yelling for Lucy, my Labrador retriever. She jumps up in the front seat and I drive away from the orchard.
It's only after I'm down the road that I realize I never even got the redhead's name.
"Come on, Lucy, get off me." I push her over on the bed and she jumps back on top of me, her paws digging into my chest. "What time is it?" I'm groggy and tired and sore, the product of going out and climbing yesterday for four hours before it got dark. I needed to do something to get the redhead off my mind.
I get up to let Lucy outside. "Girl, you should be just as tired as I am." Lucy goes out with me when I climb and roams around the mountain trails. It usually exhausts her. Clearly, that's not the case today.
She's outside for fifteen minutes or so before I start wondering what the hell she's up to. In the mornings, she's usually back pretty quickly, scratching at the door to be let back inside.
Instead, when I pull the door open, I see Lucy outside with the redhead from yesterday. The dog rubs up on her leg like she's a magic lamp or something.
Traitor dog.
The redhead looks at me. "You're not easy to find, you know."
I take a long sip of my coffee. "You ever think that there's a reason for that?" I ask. "Maybe I don't want to be found. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? Or are you just in the habit of chasing down strange men you just met and following them out to their houses?"
"Oh, is that what that thing is, then?" she asks, rubbing on Lucy's ears. Lucy is practically melting into a puddle of goo at her feet.
I glance behind me at my trailer. I don't need a damn house, don't need to put down roots when all I do is travel, contract work chasing fires during the summer, snowboarding, and fucking snow bunnies in the winter – not in West Bend, though. I avoid this place like the plague.
Now I'm back here, on account of what happened to my mother.
"Did you come here to insult me?" I ask. "That thing is my house, as a matter of fact."
"I didn't mean to insult you," she insists. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's a nice place."
"Where's your kid?"
"She's with her nanny." The nanny. Well, la-de-fucking-dah. Her kid's too good for a regular babysitter, I guess. "Didn't think I should drag her out here with me, chasing down some strange man I just met."
"No shit. I could be a psycho or something. Or you could be. I mean, at least I didn't show up at your house like an obsessed stalker."
She cocks her head to the side. "You kind of did, actually, but that's beside the point. I forgive your boorish behavior and –"
"Wait a fucking second. You forgive me?"