about it.
Her instincts told her that a guy like Cole didn’t make those kinds of moves lightly. So what did he want?
She’d bet money that he didn’t know. She knew what he didn’t want—her on his farm, which led her back into her circle of thought. Maybe he’d finally realized that she was free help. Hard to beat that.
That was the theory she was going with. Free help. Any good businessman would accept free help.
Taylor put her fingers back on the keyboard. She had no qualms about earning her keep, but what did she know about farmwork? During the times she’d spent here with her grandparents, she’d done chores, but they’d been fun chores—harvesting from the garden, maybe pulling weeds with her grandmother. Nothing that would come close to earning her keep. What on earth would he have her doing? What was she capable of doing? Digging, hoeing…she had no idea.
She glanced down at her pearly pink nails. This was going to destroy her hands.
And since when have you been such a priss?
Working would also help fill her days when she wasn’t job hunting, and that was how she needed to look at the situation. Maybe working would also help her tamp down some of her residual anger. Give her something else to focus on. Even though what happened to her wasn’t that unusual in the world of business, it still irked her. The guy they’d hired instead of her was already showcased on the bank website newsletter. So despite the assurances that US West Bank was all about growing people within the company, the bank had chosen a local guy with far less experience than her…one who planned to stay in the community. As would most rural institutions. They would grow local people from the ground up, because those people would stay.
So what now?
She put her fingers back on the keyboard to bring up a search engine.
A different career? A return to school? More student debt?
No to all.
She loved what she did for a living…she used to anyway. She was good at it. She loved the dynamics of her industry. Had there been moments when she’d wondered if it was all worth it? Very few. She refused to allow herself to think such things or deviate from her chosen course. Yes, all the hours were worth it when she had a job with prestige in a city she loved.
Now she had no job and was living in a farm building.
What if she spent the rest of her life on this farm? What if she never got another job in her field?
What if she’d been blackballed?
What if she was thinking crazy thoughts out of stress and anxiety? She settled her hands in her lap as she stared blankly at her monitor. Maybe she was the one who needed to pop a couple of pain pills. An escape from reality would be lovely.
Or maybe she needed to reshape her reality. During the first weeks after being laid off, she’d been centered on anger. She was still angry, but she was also hurt. Devastated. Her confidence wasn’t entirely shattered, but it was shaken. She was questioning herself, wondering how this could have happened. Not once had her guidance counselors and mentors mentioned that hard work could lead to this. Or that hard work and advancement could make it difficult to get a lower-paying job.
She let out a sigh and got to her feet.
Maybe it was time to start focusing once again on what had happened between her and Cole this morning. At least that was a distraction.
* * *
AS A HORSEMAN, Cole knew the power of touch—with animals and with humans. But he hadn’t expected the gut-level jolt triggered by the simple act of touching Taylor’s face. Or the feeling of connection. And wanting.
It bothered him.
He’d formed an idea of who Taylor was. Of what she was—someone he didn’t want to feel a connection with. Yet it had happened, and now he had to contend with it. The best way to do that was to focus on something other than touching and connecting and bullshit like that. So he would go to work and pretend nothing had happened. Because nothing else was going to happen.
Cole fully intended to put Taylor to work on the farm. He needed help. The knee he could deal with. He’d hurt it before and knew what to expect. The wrist was going to be a problem. It throbbed whenever he moved, which wasn’t helping his low-grade headache. Nor was the sight of Taylor leaving the bunkhouse dressed in jeans and a hoodie and crossing the driveway on her way to his house.
Time to go to work.
Time to shove aside idle thoughts about what it would have felt like to put his mouth where his thumb had been less than an hour ago. He hadn’t been laid in a month of Sundays, and that was clouding his judgment. His body wanted what it couldn’t have…well, his body was just going to have to deal.
Taylor seemed surprised to see him standing near the gate as she approached, and a guarded look slid in over top of the thoughtful expression she’d worn as she’d walked toward the house, her chin low, her gaze down.
Vulnerable wasn’t a word he would have used to describe her before this morning, but when an overachiever was no longer able to achieve, when everything the person knew turned out to be wrong…it had to be a rough adjustment.
Not that Taylor would purposely show weakness. Her chin lifted and she met his gaze head-on…but he couldn’t say she looked enthusiastic.
“What’s on the farming agenda?”
Nope. Definitely not enthusiastic. Cole had a grudging employee on his hands. Cool. All the better to give her back a little of her own.
“We’re not farming.” The seeds were in the ground, and until he had to deal with weed control and mowing along the ditches and roads, he didn’t have a lot of farmwork to do.
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Then how do you plan to work my ass off?”
“We’re tackling the boneyard.” The area where the scrap metal, wood and wire were collected had been long neglected, and part of his lease agreement with Karl had been to put the area into a semblance of order.
Her mouth opened, then closed again, telling him that he didn’t need to explain the task any further. If he’d had any doubts about whether she understood what they were going to do, it was answered by the distasteful curl of her lips. She asked, “How are ‘we’ going to do that, when half of ‘us’ are injured?”
“The knee’s already feeling better.” As long as he was wearing his brace and iced the joint every few hours.
“How about the wrist?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Fine,” she said darkly. “Just don’t hurt yourself again, because I’m not above demanding eight months of free living.”
“And I’m not above forgetting I ever made a deal.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. He guessed she had no idea that it came off as cute rather than the sneer she was probably shooting for. “What’s the goal for today?”
“To tackle the boneyard?” He thought he’d made
