it out before next week. She was tired of being the passive taker-of-crap. She was going to act.
* * *
“MIA’SBORINGHOLES through your skull with her eyes. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Dell waved his brother off. “Please. Mia Pruitt is five foot three of all bark and no bite in a baggy sweatshirt.”
“I don’t know. She takes this farm stuff pretty seriously.” Charlie stacked the last empty pallet on the truck bed. “Wouldn’t want to get in her way. Besides, she’s not bad without the glasses and the frizzy hair. Kind of cute, actually.”
“I’m not worried about Mia.” Dell pulled on a threadbare Mizzou sweatshirt. “I take my farm stuff pretty seriously, too.” He spared her a glance. Cute was probably the right word for her. With her hair straight instead of a frizz of curls and the heavy-framed glasses gone, she no longer resembled Mia, Queen of the Geeks.
But in the baggy shirt and at-least-one-size-too-big jeans, even a sexy mouth and big green eyes couldn’t push her beyond cute.
Charlie laughed. “Yeah, nothing says serious like taking off your shirt and flexing your muscles to sell a few extra cucumbers.”
“Hey, a true businessman does what he has to do.”
Charlie shook his head. “Whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night, man.”
His VP of sales older brother could sneer at the farm and all that went with it as much as he liked, but with Dad making noises about selling instead of passing the farm on to Dell, Dell knew he had to kick ass this market season. That meant whatever tactics necessary, regardless of Charlie’s approval.
If that meant taking off his shirt, so be it. A little harmless flirting and a few extra dollars in his pocket wouldn’t hurt anyone, and it’d help him. Why did people have to assume that meant he was an idiot? He was raking it in.
“Can we hurry this up? I’ve got a lunch date with Emily downtown in, like, an hour.”
Dell nodded and picked up the pace. Choosing a noisy, bustling dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown over the quiet ease of lunch at Moonrise in New Benton was beyond him. But then, the things he didn’t understand about his older brother were too many to count.
Dell folded the awning and was tying it together when a pair of greenish cowboy boots stepped into his vision. He looked up, quirked an eyebrow at Mia.
“Wainwright.” She was almost a foot shorter than he, so she had to tilt her head back when he stood to his full height.
He nodded, tipped the brim of his ball cap. “Pruitt.” Maybe he should have worn a Stetson hat. This felt more like high noon than a friendly greeting.
“Still lowering yourself to stripping for attention?” She crossed her arms over her chest, narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought maybe you’d grown up a bit since last year.”
She had a dusting of light brown freckles across her nose. Kind of weird to notice it now, but then again he’d never spent much time looking at Mia. The girl who’d been the champion of awkward moments in high school, then come back from college quiet and unassuming. Of course, she’d never gotten up in his face and accused him of stripping before.
Dell grinned. That meant she thought he was a threat to her tidy little business. He primed up the charm and the drawl. “Don’t worry, darling. I’m sure there’ll be enough customers to go around. Not everyone is swayed by good looks and charm. Just most people.”
She didn’t cower. She didn’t walk away. She didn’t even dissolve into the Queen of the Geeks she’d been in high school. No, Mia Pruitt grinned at him—which had to be a first, even if she’d grown out of most of her awkwardness since she’d come back from college.
“Oh, I’m not worried. But you should be,” she said. Then she sauntered away with enough confidence that Dell stared after her.
“Whoa.” The saunter. The grin. Even with all her recent changes, he’d never seen that kind of...attitude from Mia before. Was it his imagination, or was it kind of hot?
Charlie slapped him on the back. “Told you not to cross her. Mia isn’t the girl hiding behind the pony at Kelsey’s birthday party anymore, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Dell stared after Mia’s swinging hips. Apparently he hadn’t noticed that at all.
MIAPULLEDHER truck into the parking lot at Orscheln and tried not to be irritated by all Dad’s sighing and grumbling. She drove too fast, braked too hard. The one and only place Dad ever criticized her.
Which was why, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why he didn’t drive himself. Or stay home.
“If you hate coming to town so much, you don’t have to come. I could always get whatever you need.”
“Have to ask Rick about this new vaccine.”
“You could do that on the phone. I bet Rick even has email.”
Dad harrumphed and got out of the truck. Mia trudged after him. Mostly, she loved spending time with Dad. He’d always been her biggest supporter, and one of the few people she felt understood her.
But going to Orscheln with Dad meant people didn’t get used to her as Mia Pruitt, serious farmer. They still saw the girl who had cried when all the chickens had been sold, or accidentally let all the kittens up for adoption out of their cage because she’d been trying to pet them.
Daughter of the town hermit, the man who refused to talk to anyone except Rick when he came in. Should another employee approach him, he’d turn and walk away. If Rick was out sick, Dad would hop in his truck and go home.
Oh, who was she kidding? Even when she came in without Dad she was a Pruitt, and there was a lot of baggage that went with that.
But she could pretend when she was alone. Pretend she was your average twenty-six-year-old vegetable farmer. Or something.
“I’m going to...look at some plants. You go ahead inside.” It was an excuse, a pathetic one at that, but maybe if she could pretend they hadn’t walked in together...
Mia stared gloomily at some pansies as Dad grunted and went inside. She was being kind of a crap daughter, and that made her feel guilty. Especially having been on the receiving end of the “go ahead inside, I’ll wait out here” line more than once.
“Of all the gin joints in the world, she walked into mine.”
Mia closed her eyes. Apparently today was really going to make her feel as if she was sixteen again. She glanced over her shoulder at Dell. He had his beat-up Cardinals hat on, equally worn jeans and a black T-shirt that did unfair things to showcase the muscles of his arms.
If she was a cat, she’d hiss at him. Instead, she mustered her best fake smile. “You’re wearing a shirt. What a novelty.”
“No shirt, no shoes, no service.” He grinned, and she hated that some part of her reacted
