He’d used the tractor to haul a dead tree out of the creek. Chopped, it’d provide a year’s heating. The fire stove was nearly out. This needed doing.
Not with Alex.
She didn’t know the rules. She was heaving timber as if she was his mate, rather than …
Rather than what? He was being a chauvinist. Hadn’t he learned his lesson last night?
But the logs were far too heavy for a woman. Her hands …
She didn’t want to be treated as a woman, he told himself. Her hands were her business.
No.
‘If you were a guy, I’d still be saying put gloves on,’ he growled. ‘There’s a heap up in the stables. Find your size and don’t come back again until you have them on.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘I’m your employer,’ he snapped. ‘I get to pay employee insurance. Gloves or you don’t work.’
She straightened and stared at him. That stare might work on some, he thought, but it wasn’t working on him.
‘Your choice,’ he said, and turned his chainsaw back on.
She glowered, then stomped up to the stables to fetch some gloves. And then came back and kept right on working.
They worked solidly for two hours, and Jack was totally disconcerted. He started chopping the logs a little smaller, to make it easier for her to stack, but he’d expected after half an hour she’d have long quitted.
She hadn’t. She didn’t.
He worked on. She piled the trailer high. He had to stop to take it up to the house and empty it. She followed the truck and trailer to the house and helped heave wood into the woodshed. Then, as he checked again on Sancha and the foal, without being asked, she took the tractor and headed back to the river to start on the next load.
Either she was stronger than she looked, or she was pig stubborn. He couldn’t tell unless he could see her hands. He couldn’t see her hands because she kept the gloves on. She worked with a steady rhythm he found disconcerting.
She was from New York. She shouldn’t be able to heave wood almost as easily as he did.
She did.
Finally the second trailer was full.
Lunch.
He’d slapped a bit of beef into bread to make sandwiches to bring with him. He’d brought down beer.
There wasn’t enough to go round, and it was time she stopped.
‘There’s heaps of food in the kitchen,’ he told her. ‘You’ve done a decent day’s work. Head back up and get some rest.’
She shook her head. She’d been carrying a sweater when she arrived. She’d laid it aside at the edge of the clearing. She went to it now, and retrieved a parcel from under it.
A water bottle and a packet of sandwiches. Neater than the ones he’d made.
‘How did you know …?’
‘You left the sandwich bread and the cutting board on the sink,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take Einstein to figure sandwiches had been made. I figured if you were avoiding plumbers, I would, too.’
‘I’m not avoiding plumbers.’
‘Avoiding me, then? You want to tell me what you have against women?’ She bit into her sandwich, making it a casual question. Like it didn’t matter.
‘I don’t have anything against women. I just assumed you couldn’t be up to the job.’
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