Saving Simon (Tarnished Saints Series Book 5) (13 page)

“You know Thomas is busy with his own business.”

“Well, I’ve got a job for him. Mr. Parsons from across the lake came by early this morning with an outboard motor that seized up on him. He wants it working before his grandkids come up tomorrow so he can take them out on his boat. I’m sure Thomas can handle this, since he’s had lots of experience with fixing motors.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him. Where are you going to be?”

“I’m going to take Pippa to Old Man MacAllister’s farm. James told me the peaches are in and I want her to experience picking them right off the tree.”

Thad made a face. “Simon, what are you doing? A girl like Piper would rather be sitting in a bubble bath painting her nails than traipsing around an orchard, climbing ladders and picking rotten fruit off a tree.”

“The only thing rotten around here is your attitude, little brother. Now do you think you can handle all this or not?”

“I’m guessing you want to get her in bed, don’t you?” asked Thad with a knowing smile. “I’ve seen the way you operate around women and this is definitely phase one. Usually, instead of fruit picking, you’re usually feeding them chocolate covered strawberries with one hand and unbuttoning their shirt with the other. Actually, Piper might like that approach better.”

“Well, she’s not getting that approach. I need to make her love living in the country before I even try anything with her.”

“Like that’s going to happen,” he said with a puff of air from his mouth. “She’s a city girl, Simon, or didn’t you notice?”

“Believe me, I noticed. But the more she likes it here the worse she’ll feel about closing down the marina.”

“You don’t really think she’ll do that, do you?”

“Don’t you remember her father from the cruise?”

Thad made a face and nodded his head. “I see your point. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

“Great, because I think I see her car pulling in now. Wish me luck.” Simon jumped off the sailboat and headed down the pier quickly, hoping to hell the girl liked peaches.

Piper pulled up to the marina and was about to get out when Simon opened the door to the car.

“Scoot over,” he said, jamming his large body into her car, giving her no choice but to move over to the passenger side. She was wearing a short black stretchy dress with heels today and when she shifted positions trying to get over the console, her dress rode up in the process. Simon looked over just then and his attention dropped to her hemline that was now up to her groin. “Oh. You’re wearing that today?”

He sounded disappointed and she didn’t understand why. She’d purposely chosen this dress because it was the sexiest thing she’d brought with on the trip. Since she was only five foot six, she decided to wear her three inch heels to make her legs look longer too. She’d spent half the morning shaving her legs, plucking her eyebrows, and moisturizing her skin, just in case he decided to touch her again or be in such close quarters like yesterday on the boat.

“Don’t you like this dress?” she asked, yanking down the hem and reaching over for her seatbelt. She was wearing her designer sunglasses and pushed them up to the top of her head.

“Oh, I like it all right. It’s just not what I’d hoped you’d be wearing today, that’s all.” He put the top down on the convertible, and she wished he hadn’t. Now her hair was going to get messed up in the breeze, and she’d just spent an hour fixing it. She’d decided to wear it long instead of pulling it back, as she hoped to look more alluring to him.

“What did you hope I’d be wearing?” She suddenly felt very insecure. Maybe he thought she was too sexy and that she was a loose woman, which she wasn’t. Now she wondered if trying to impress him like this had been a bad idea. She’d been trying to at least appear a little experienced, when the truth was she was still a virgin at the age of twenty-five.

Simon was eight years older than her and she knew he was probably very experienced with women and wouldn’t be interested in a virgin. She felt excited yet nervous to be around him when he looked at her with those hungry eyes, and though she wanted more than anything to kiss him again or perhaps even make love to him, she was also scared out of her mind.

“I hoped you’d be wearing pants, not a dress and shoes with six inch heels,” he said in a low voice.

“These are only three inch heels,” she protested, picking up her foot so he could see them, and once again his eyes were focused on her legs.

“Well whatever they are, they are not ideal for what I had planned today.”

“I didn’t know we had plans. I’d just planned on working.”

“That’s the problem with you,” he said, heading down the road much too fast in her opinion. The roads were gravel and the dust rose up around her car and she just shuttered thinking how dirty it was going to be from sand and silt once they stopped. Not to mention, she was getting dusty as well.

“What do you mean? What’s the problem with me?” she asked, trying to hold down her hair, and not understanding why he seemed so perturbed.

“You only think about work and never about fun.”

“That’s not true. I don’t work on the weekends. Usually.”

“Really? Well, what do you do with your days off?”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

He was challenging her and she didn’t like it. The truth was she had no life outside of work and that’s why even on the weekends she decided to go in to the office or bury her nose in the computer.

“For example, just last week I went on a cruise.”

“I’m not talking about that. I mean when you’re home. In Chicago.”

“Well, I go shopping or get my hair and nails done, and sometimes I even take my car in to get detailed with a wash and wax.”

“All by yourself.”

“Of course. Those aren’t things you do with others.”

“What do you do with your friends?”

She cringed when he asked that question. The only friends she really had were pretentious and stuffy. She didn’t really like them but her father said those were the type of people she should be spending time with, so she had.

“I don’t want to talk about me anymore. Now why don’t you tell me where you’re taking me?”

“We’re here,” he said, pulling into a driveway that led to a little farm house and a big barn out back. There was a field next to the barn surrounded by a wooden fence and she could see a half dozen horses inside the enclosure eating grass.

“Please don’t tell me we’re going horseback riding because I don’t ride and don’t ever intend to try.”

“I didn’t think you did, nor would I expect you to ride in that dress and with those heels. You’d probably puncture the poor horse’s lungs with those spikes.”

“Then why are we here?” she asked, just praying that he wasn’t expecting her to get out of the car. She didn’t like animals and wasn’t up for a trot in the mud. Going on the boat yesterday was already pushing her past her limits.

“You’re going to experience something you’ve never done before.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, tell me something you’ve never experienced and I’ll let you know if you’re right.”

The only thing that kept running through her mind was that she’d never experienced making love to a man, and she hoped to hell he didn’t expect her first time to be in a barn.

“Simon, over here!” She looked out the window to see an old man driving a tractor that was pulling a wagon behind it. It was loud and noisy and stinky as well. She could smell the air filled with exhaust.

“Mr. MacAllister, good to see you again.” Simon came around and opened her door. “Come on, princess,” he said. “Your coach awaits.”

“What?” Horrified, she looked up to realize that whatever Simon had planned for them, involved getting on the wagon being pulled by the tractor that was lined with hay. “No. I’m not going.”

“You don’t even know what we’re doing yet, now stop being so uptight and loosen up already.” He didn’t give her another chance to object. He pulled her out of the car, closed the door and hurried her over to the back of the tractor. “I thought James was taking us out to the orchard today,” said Simon as he lifted her up and plopped her down in the hay and jumped up onto the back of the wagon next to her.

The smell of hay made her sneeze, and when she did her designer sunglasses flew off her head and hit the ground.

“James is running a little behind on his errands and asked me to take you instead.” The old man backed up the tractor just then and the wheel of the cart smashed her sunglasses before she had a chance to retrieve them.

“My sunglasses!” she cried out hearing the sickening crunch, but when she leaned forward to get them, Simon grabbed her by the arm and held her on the cart.

“Let them go, Pippa. It’s too late.”

Then the tractor lurched forward and she almost fell off. Simon’s arm was around her immediately holding her in place.

“I really don’t like this,” she said.

“You will,” he answered almost like it was a promise he planned on keeping somehow.

It was too much effort to talk louder than the sound of the tractor so she just kept quiet until they finally stopped in an orchard of what looked like peaches.

“We’re here,” he said, hopping off the cart, then helping her down as well.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour or so,” said the old man. “There’s plenty of bushels under the trees. Use as many as you need. Just line them up and we’ll load them on the wagon when I get back.”

“Thanks again,” said Simon with a wave of his hand as the man drove away, leaving him alone with Piper in the orchard. He turned around smiling until he saw her with her arms crossed over her chest and the look of malice on her face.

“You brought me here to pick peaches?” The tone of her voice reminded him of his sixth grade teacher reprimanding him for bringing a frog to school he’d found at the lake one day while he was fishing.

“That’s the idea,” he said, bending down and grabbing two bushels, handing one to her.

“I can’t do this. I’m in a dress and heels.”

“Yeah.” His eyes scanned her body in one long sweep from head to toe. “That’s kind of why I said I wished you would have worn pants and flat shoes.”

“Well, then you should have told me ahead of time.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“I hate surprises. Had I known, I never would have come.”

“That’s the other reason I didn’t tell you.”

“So now what?” she asked, looking down the hill at the rows and rows of trees. They were so far from the house and barn that the buildings weren’t even visible right now.

“So now we pick peaches.”

“For a whole hour?”

“Actually, it’ll probably be more like two hours. Old Man MacAllister has a tendency to drop people off in the orchard and forget that he has to go back and get them. That’s the reason I wanted James to bring us out here, but too late for that. So I suggest we get started and try to have a good time doing this.”

She just stood there with her jaw set firm, shading her eyes with her hand from the sun. “Those were my favorite sunglasses. I can’t be out in the sun without them.”

“Nonsense. I sailed around Lake Michigan on a sailboat one summer and did it without sunglasses. I think you can live without yours for an hour or two.”

She didn’t seem to like the idea but followed him over to the tree anyways, her heels sinking into the soft earth as she walked. He held onto her arm to keep her from falling.

“So the idea is to find the ones that look the best,” he explained, turning around to look at her. “Not too soft, not too hard. Just firm and round, plump and . . . juicy.” His eyes settled on her cleavage just then, and in that tight dress he could see her entire firm, round, plump and juicy body, and his mind ran a mile a minute as he tried to push the vision out of his head of kissing her and feeling her peaches. He saw her looking at him oddly and his thoughts snapped back to picking fruit. “No buggy ones, either,” he added. “When you put them in the bushel, don’t drop them. You have to be gentle so you don’t bruise them. They’ll last longer that way.”

“Whatever.” They picked peaches for awhile and then when most the lower ones were gone, she stopped. “What about the ones way up there?” she asked, shading her eyes and looking up higher where the nicer peaches were on the tree.

“Those we get with a ladder.” He spotted an old wooden ladder a few trees over and got it and brought it back and set it up. “Go ahead. Climb on up and I’ll hold it.”

“I can’t climb in my heels.”

“Take them off, Pippa. Or did you want me to do it for you?”

Her eyes shot up and interlocked with his, and all of a sudden he had all kinds of fantasies about undressing her slowly, one piece of clothing at a time. Once again his libido was working overtime and he wished to hell she hadn’t worn this outfit today because he felt himself getting hard right now. He was so hot he couldn’t stand it, and pulled off his t-shirt and stood there bare-chested before her. He saw her eyes perusing his body the same way he’d just done to her and that only made it worse. No longer willing to wait for her to remove her shoes, he daringly dropped to the ground and took a hold of her foot in his hand.