Always on My Mind (16 page)

Lori stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Are you actually asking me what I want to do?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Lori. You know that.”

Her smile came so suddenly he actually felt the wind knocked out of him at the beautiful force of it. “Of course I know that, but it’s so fun to see if I can make you lose it,” she teased, and amazingly, his gut untwisted a little. “Plus, it keeps Sweetpea entertained when you stomp around and smoke starts coming out of your ears—doesn’t it, baby?” she said to the cat, who was watching the two of them from the bed of pillows and blankets Lori had made for her on the floor by a heating vent.

“Don’t let her pull you into this discussion, Mo,” he warned the cat.

Lori laughed out aloud, a sweet waterfall of joy that untwisted his gut even further. “Aha! You finally talked to her like she’s a person.” She clapped her hands. “Just because of that, I’ll go with you to the barn thing.”

She wasn’t pushing him anymore on his wife’s crash, so he wouldn’t push her on the fact that she couldn’t even say the word
dance
.

But he wanted to. And that was what worried him most—even more than the desire over which he had no control whatsoever. It was why he was taking her to the barn dance, after all—because he’d heard her on the phone with her sister and knew how badly she missed dancing, how important it really was to her.

For three years he’d been so careful to keep himself from getting close to anyone, but Lori had barged into his life and refused to take no for an answer when he’d told her he didn’t have time to train a farmhand who had no experience and was worse than useless.

Somehow she’d gotten under his skin.

And he didn’t know how to get her out again.

He was frowning when the soft, oh-so-sweet touch of her hand on his jaw finally made him stop and look down at her beautiful face again. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said to me in the stables,” she said in a soft voice. “It turns out you were right about it being easier for me to focus on helping you rather than looking at my own life.”

“Don’t.” He covered her hand with his. “Please don’t let me off the hook like that. I fucked up, Lori. And you shouldn’t forgive me.”

The last thing he expected her to do was smile up at him. “You just said it yourself—you can’t keep me from doing whatever I want.” She lightly stroked his cheek. “And I want to forgive you. But only for what happened in the stables. Because what just happened here against the door...” Her eyes flashed with heat. “Well, I can’t think of any part of your kisses that you have to be sorry about.”

With that, she turned and walked out the door toward his truck. Still reeling from everything that had just been said between them, it was a hell of a job for Grayson to try to keep his eyes from wandering to her hips as he followed her, especially when he had a bad feeling that she wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath the form-fitting dress.

Sweet Lord, what he’d give to touch her naked skin again, to press not only his hands, but also his mouth, to her. To all of her.

Before she could reach for the door handle of his truck, he opened it for her, then offered a hand to help her up. She looked surprised, but she placed her hand in his.

He forgot to let go as he looked down at her fingernails. “You’ve put on nail polish.” And she smelled like vanilla and spice, so sweet and sultry that he was barely able to tamp down the overpowering urge to bury his face in the curve of her neck and breathe her in.

“Mascara, too,” she said as she fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I didn’t want people to think you couldn’t do any better than a girl who didn’t know how to take care of herself.”

God, he was so mesmerized by the flick of her tongue against her glossy upper lip that he could barely remember why he’d taken her hand. Finally, he realized they were standing beside his truck and the door was open.

“Can you climb in okay with those heels on?”

She shot him a sassy look. A look that owned every last letter of her naughty nickname.

“I can do absolutely
anything
in these heels.”

As he closed her door and walked around the back of the truck, he had to adjust himself in his jeans to try to hide his hard-on. The vision of making love to Lori while she was wearing nothing but those red spike heels wouldn’t go away as they drove from his farm to his neighbor’s property fifteen minutes away.

Grayson parked in a dark corner behind a large grouping of shrubs at the very edge of the parking area. When Lori got out of his truck, it was so dark that she asked, “Are you sure there’s a party here tonight?” Before he could answer, she walked around the thick shrubs and finally saw the brightly lit barn, and the colored lanterns that were placed along the path from the parking area.

“Look at all these lights and the lanterns and the decorations! I swear, it looks like the moon has been hung above the barn just for tonight. Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?”

Because he’d never appreciated any of this until right this very second when he could see it through her eyes—eyes that saw the beauty in absolutely everything. But instead of telling her that, he simply held out a hand. “Sounds like the band is already playing. Ready to head in?”

She looked uncertain for a moment before nodding. When she put her hand in his, he realized that holding her that way was shockingly right, as though she really was his girl and he was taking her out for a night of dancing, country style.

Chapter Fifteen

Lori loved how it felt to hold Grayson’s hand. He wasn’t giving her his trust, wasn’t baring his soul to her and letting her try to help him, but even though holding hands was something small, it wasn’t nothing.

Yes, she knew it would be smarter to keep her walls completely up with him. Especially since he’d already proved he knew how to cut her to the quick, that all it took was a few well-placed words and a disgusted expression to rip her heart to shreds.

But now that she had some insight into what he’d suffered, how could she just turn away from him?

Just then, she stumbled over a rock in the dark and Grayson caught her in his arms. And when she looked into the barn over his shoulder, she realized everyone was gawking at them.

“I don’t think you’ll have any problem convincing the neighbors that you’re off the market,” she murmured as she drew back from him.

“Good,” was all he said as he brought her fully inside the barn.

The barn was just as beautifully lit up inside as it was outside. She saw the hay bales lining the large space, the country band playing up on the stage at the far end of the building, the dance floor that had been cleared in front of them, and the drink and food stations positioned all throughout the rest of the barn.

She was the only person in satin and heels, although there were plenty of sequins on display, so at least she’d gotten one thing right. She’d intended to make Grayson look ridiculous...only now she was the one who had to get through the night looking like she should be at the Oscars rather than at a community dance. Whereas Grayson looked exactly right in his dark jeans, denim shirt, cowboy boots, and hat.

“Grayson, glad you could make it.” A man in Wranglers and a big black cowboy hat that matched his shiny black boots patted Grayson on the shoulder hard enough that she could feel it vibrate through her.

“Place looks great, Joe,” Grayson responded. “I’d like you to meet Lori.”

The man tipped his hat to her. “Pretty girls are always welcome in my barn.” He winked at her. “Just don’t tell my wife I said that.”

“What are you not supposed to tell me?” asked an attractive middle-aged woman with honey-blonde hair wearing a jean skirt that fell to her knees and a leather vest over a fitted white shirt. She smiled at Grayson, but her eyes chilled a bit as she took in Lori’s outfit.

“That I’ve never been to a barn dance before,” Lori said with a smile that she hoped didn’t betray how out of place she felt. She hadn’t met this woman at the CSA pick-up, but everyone else had been so nice there she had no reason to think this woman wouldn’t be nice, too. “Everything looks amazing.”

“Thank you,” the other woman said with perfect politeness, before turning back to Grayson and saying, “I’m so pleased you finally decided to come to one of our dances. You’ll have to tell me what changed your mind.”

Lori looked at Grayson in surprise. He’d never been to one of these before? He’d made it sound like they hadn’t had a choice. What reason could he have had to force her to come with him?

But before he could answer the woman’s question, more people started coming up to talk to him. He was, she realized, a very popular man. And yet, they hadn’t had a single visitor on the farm in the week she’d been working for him. It was almost as if everyone was scared of ruining the perfect wall of solitude he’d built up around himself over the past three years.

A short while later, a little girl with pigtails skirted through the adults’ legs to touch her dress, but just as Lori was about to bend down to say hello, the frosty woman pulled her away.

I’m not here to cause any trouble,
Lori wanted to tell her.
All I want to do is help Grayson, I swear.

The band began to play a song by one of her favorite bands, and from around the men with whom Grayson was talking about tractors, she could see the people on the dance floor trying to do a line dance. She craned her neck to see better, but her view was impeded where they were standing.

She felt Grayson’s thumb brush lightly across her palm as he said, “You want to dance.”

He said it as if he didn’t know that she wasn’t interested in dancing ever again, as if she hadn’t already told him that dancing meant nothing to her anymore.

“No,” she said firmly, even though she was getting that little itch in the soles of her feet that always happened when just the right song was playing. “It’s just that if, instead of doing a brush kick on the two, they pivoted—”

She realized, too late, that he was giving her a funny look, and clamped her lips shut.

“Sounds like you know this dance pretty well,” he pointed out.

She would have tried to play off her reaction to the line dancing, if right then Joe’s frosty wife hadn’t said, “Funny, you don’t look like the line-dancing type.”

Lori had never been known for her patience. And it had been one heck of a week. Between having to finally face what a total douchebag her ex was, and then the trials of not only learning to work Grayson’s farm, but also trying to push away her intense attraction to him, she was left holding on to an extremely short string.

“I was the choreographer for Lost Highway’s video.” She paused a beat to appreciate the shock registering on the woman’s face. “This is
my
line dance.”

The next thing she knew, Grayson was giving her a gentle shove in the direction of the dance floor and she was standing in front of the group of line dancers. Quickly picking out a couple of teenagers who had good timing, she explained who she was and what she’d like them to try to do with her. Scanning her dress and heels, they both looked at her like she was crazy, but when she started dancing, doing the moves as easily in her heels and fancy dress as she would have in boots and denim, their mouths dropped open.

As she ran through the moves of the line dance, a fancy stranger in the midst of a very tight-knit community, she realized she was the only one moving on the dance floor as everyone stopped to gape at her...apart from a really cute little girl Lori recognized from the CSA pickup, who didn’t seem to realize that anything strange was happening at all. With the music pumping through her veins, not the least bit daunted, Lori grabbed a teenage boy’s arm so that he could twirl her around in a modified do-si-do. By the time she let him go, the teen was grinning and jumping in beside her, picking up each move she’d just done perfectly.

Soon the two of them turned to half a dozen and, as the band launched back into the song from the beginning, it seemed like every person in the barn was claiming a spot on the dance floor to kick up their heels and laugh with the person twirling in their arms.

* * *

Grayson stood against the wall and watched as Lori worked her way through the dancers to help get them back on track and to call out the moves when things got a little hairy.

My God, she could dance. He’d never seen anyone move like her, not even in his old life, when he’d had the chance to mix with professional dancers from time to time.

Her dress was clinging slightly to her skin now as the barn heated up from all of the dancers, and her long, dark hair was starting to curl against the damp nape of her neck. Watching the way she moved so effortlessly in the heels and beautiful dress gave him a clear view into the world she’d come from. One that he guessed was very similar to the one in which he used to live in New York City.

And yet, she’d been just as comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, and even though she muttered about going into the pigpen, he knew she secretly loved mucking around like a little kid let loose in a mud puddle after a storm.

Grayson honestly couldn’t choose which version he liked better—the made-up Lori was just another side of her, yet another one he hadn’t been prepared for. All he knew was that she was beautiful...and that, somehow, despite everything he’d done to try to stop it from happening, she’d managed to steal his heart one sassy smile at a time.

Chapter Sixteen

Applause rang out in the barn at the end of the line dance that had gone on for a good fifteen minutes straight. Lori loved how the little kids didn’t think twice about wrapping their arms around her waist to hug her.

“You’re so pretty, ma’am. What’s your name?”

Lori smiled down at the little girl with the big brown eyes and bright pink cheeks, the same one who had wanted to touch her dress earlier. She couldn’t have been more than four years old, but she’d been out there dancing up a storm, following the moves even better than most of the bigger kids and adults.