Luke: A West Bend Saints Romance (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Luke

"Good morning, Autumn!"  The front door slams and Olivia squeals, tottering headlong down the hallway.  "Hey Liv-livs!"

"In here," Autumn calls.

The girl arrives in the kitchen, with Olivia perched on her hip, and stops short when she looks at me, not even bothering to hide her raised eyebrows.  "Oh," she says, smiling.  "I didn't know you had company."

"He's not company," Autumn says, shaking her head.  Autumn's face flushes nearly as red as her hair, and she looks guilty as sin, like we were caught with our pants down around our ankles or something.

Not that I haven't been thinking about what
that
would be like with this woman.

There's just something about that uptight, haughty attitude that makes me want to get her to let loose.  She's not even my type – too straight-laced for my taste – yet all I could think about after I left her place last night was running my hands down her sweet curves, covering my mouth with hers.

"Greta Hayward, meet Luke Saint," Autumn is saying, her voice interrupting my thoughts.  "He's the new foreman," Autumn says.  "I think.  He helped with the fire."

"I'm a smoke jumper."

Autumn turns toward me.  "You are?"

Greta clears her throat.  "It looks like you have some business to take care of," she says.  She gives Autumn a wide-eyed look that I definitely don't mistake.  She's giving us space because she thinks there's something going on between us.

Autumn apparently doesn't notice that look.  "You're a smoke jumper," she says.

"Yup."

"So you already have a job," she says.  "You don't need this one."

I shrug.  "I do and I don't."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks.  "God, you're infuriating."

"I'm infuriating because I have a job?"

"No, you're infuriating because you don't give a straight answer to any question."

"Maybe you should stop being nosy, and I'll stop being evasive."

Autumn exhales heavily, and gives me a look out of the corner of her eye – pure irritation --that just makes me laugh.  "You're already the worst employee ever."

"I can be a better one," I say softly, not bothering to disguise the innuendo evident in my tone.

What the hell is wrong with me?  She's older, has a kid, and is completely not the kind of woman I need to be fucking around with.

Autumn's eyes widen, and when she stands up, I do something stupid.  Reckless.  I reach out and take hold of her wrist to stop her.

"What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me.  I'd think she was pissed, except the way she looks at me with big eyes, the sharp inhale of breath, makes me absolutely sure she's not angry at all.

I turn her hand over, slowly tracing the inside of her wrist with my finger, and then running it across her palm.  By the time I reach the middle of her hand, her eyes close softly, just for a second, like she's blinking except it's just a moment too long to be that innocuous.  She's enjoying my touch.  Savoring it.

Her lips part, just slightly, and I think I hear her moan, so softly I'm not quite sure.  The fact that she's so turned on by my touching her hand makes me want to fucking explode, my cock rigid against the zipper of my jeans.

It's been a long time since she's been touched by anyone, I can tell that immediately.  That fact makes her vulnerable.  She's been burned.

That fact makes her the kind of girl I shouldn't be putting my hands on, not at all.  That fact makes her the kind of girl I shouldn't be thinking about the way I'm thinking right now.

I'm not the kind of guy a girl like her needs.

I pull my hands away from hers and clear my throat. "Nothing.  Absolutely nothing."

***

"Are you sure you want this job?"  Autumn walks ahead of me through the orchard, between the rows of apple trees.

"Temporarily," I note.  "Until you find someone more permanent."

"Why?"  She pauses to look at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. 

"Because there's no sense in you winding up burning down this damn property on account of a no good foreman."

"You sure you've got nowhere else to be?" she asks.

She asks like she's interested, like she wants to know the answer to why I'm hanging around West Bend.  She has no idea what a complicated fucking answer that is.  Shit, it's more than complicated.  It's just plain ol' fucked up.

My abusive asshole father was the reason I got the hell out of West Bend as soon as I turned eighteen.  He died a few months ago, and the world is a better place for it.  I don't give a shit that he's dead, except that my mother supposedly committed suicide after that.

My father's death makes sense to me – the medical examiner ruled it accidental, a contusion to the back of the head.  Shit, there was nothing unusual about that.  The man was a drunk, a mean one, and stumbling around and falling into things was par for the course for him.

But my mother, killing herself?  After the man who made her life – and ours – a living hell was finally dead?

Shit, that just hasn't sat well with me.  After all that time she stayed with him, why would she kill herself when he finally died?

I should be long gone from West Bend.  Instead, I'm here for now, for reasons I can't explain to this girl, Autumn Mayburn, who comes from old money.  Bourbon money.  Yeah, I went home and searched her on the internet last night.  Even if I didn't read what I read about her family's bourbon company, I'd be able to tell by the way she carries herself – sure and certain of every step she takes.  She's classy.

And I'm as far away from
class
as you can get.

"Luke?" Autumn asks, jolting me out of my thoughts.

"Yep."

"You don't have someplace else to be?"

"Nah.  I'm here in West Bend for a little while," I say.  "Taking some time off."

Autumn looks at me for a long moment, and I think she sees right through my flimsy statement, but she doesn't probe any further.  She just nods.  "Okay.  My gain, then."  She pauses.  "I think."

I clear my throat.  "What are you doing with this place, anyway?"

Autumn laughs.  "You mean how did I wind up running an orchard?  That's kind of personal, don't you think?"

"No. I meant, what are you doing with this place, as in what are your goals?"

I walk beside her, and she doesn't laugh this time, instead looking at me out of the corner of her eye.  "Why are you asking?" she says.

"I noticed some things, walking around here, things you could be doing different with the orchard, planting more efficiently."

"You know about orchards?"

"I know trees," I say.  "I worked for the forest service right out of college.  You should hire a foreman who knows trees, you know.  This being an orchard and all."

Autumn sighs.  "Yes, I realize.  I was in a pinch, hiring the last one.  I just needed someone to manage the employees out here."

"Anyway, it matters if you're thinking bigger harvest, more production, that kind of thing.  Spacing trees and things like that."

Autumn nods.  "Okay," she says.  "Show me."

We spend the rest of the morning walking down rows of trees, going out to the edges of the orchard, and I give her my take on things, point out changes I think might increase production when she's planning her planting again.  The fire didn't damage much, hitting some of the trees that had already been harvested, and I tell her how she should replant the burnt areas more efficiently.

She tells me about her plans for the cidery, how she's in local restaurants and shops, but planning to expand in the next year, looking for placement in larger restaurants and craft brew stores outside of West Bend.

We walk and talk, and I find myself surprised by her knowledge of the orchard and her obvious love for it.  When she shows me the cidery, she lights up as she talks about the brewing process and the different variations she's trying.

She's taking me through the cidery, and as she talks, I can't hear the words coming out of her mouth any more, because I'm too busy watching her lips open and close.  Those soft, lush lips.  When she gestures toward something, half-facing me, it's all I can do not to grab her and push her up against the wall.

"Luke?" she asks softly.

"Autumn," I say, her name rolling off my tongue. 
Autumn.
  I think about how her name would sound coming out of my mouth when I'm fucking her, and I immediately regret it, because my cock goes rock hard and if she looks down, that's what she's going to see.

"Stop looking at my tits," she says.  But she doesn't sound annoyed.  In fact, her voice is breathy.  It sounds more like an
invitation
to look at her tits. 

"I'm not looking at your tits."  Now I'm lying, because I'm obviously looking at them now that she said something.  They're pretty fucking amazing tits, actually, her cleavage visible at the top of the v-cut of her t-shirt.  When she inhales sharply, her chest rises, and my cock throbs at the sight.

"Liar," she says softly.

But when I step closer to her, she doesn't move away.  "I think you
want
me to look at your tits."

The corners of her mouth turn up, just slightly.  "Of course you think that."

I don't know what it is about this woman.  I've known her all of two days, and she just seems to have a way of getting under my skin.  "I think that, because it's a
fact
."

"You
think
that because you're the kind of guy who thinks every woman in the world wants him," she says.

I'm so close to her I can smell her, the light scent of her perfume lingering in the air between us.  Her lips are slightly parted as she looks up at me, and all I can think about is how much I want to bite that lower lip of hers.  "Well, that's pretty much a fact, too," I say.

"You're an arrogant shit," she says.  But she's smiling.

"Not arrogant," I say.  "
Accurate
."  I trail my finger underneath her jaw, tilting her head up toward me, and she doesn't pull away.  Her eyelids close lightly, and she practically melts against me, she wants it so bad.
  Fuck, she's not the only one who wants it.

I tell myself that I should just turn away, tell myself that I shouldn't touch her.  Except I'm drawn to her, and there's no way I can turn away.

I touch my lips lightly to hers, just grazing them and – an overhead light flicks on in the cidery.

Autumn jumps back away from me, like she's just been electrocuted. 

"Autumn!"  A woman calls, bustling into the room, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, her hair pushed up under a hair net.  "Oh, sorry.  I didn't know you were giving someone a tour."

Autumn clears her throat, and she's suddenly businesslike, her voice crisp.  "Mary, this is Luke.  He's going to be the new foreman."

Mary sticks out her hand.  "Nice to meet you."

"Mary knows everything there is to know about the day to day operations in the cidery," Autumn says.  If I didn't hear the slight waver at the end of Autumn's voice, I wouldn't think anything at all had just passed between us.

Well, aside from the fact that my dick is as hard as a fucking rock right now.  Mary doesn't seem to notice, and Autumn is pointedly ignoring me.

"I don't know about being an expert," Mary says.  "But if you have any questions, I'll be the person to ask.  I can always find the answers to anything that's got to do with cider."

By the time Mary leaves, Autumn is back to being all business, asking me if I have any questions, thanking me for my observations about planting the orchard.  That's how she says it too – thank you for your observations.  She's formal again, as if she didn't just tell me to stop looking at her tits in the cidery.

At the front porch, she pauses and asks if I have any questions.

"Just one," I say.  "Want to finish what we started?"

Shit, I just can't help myself.

Autumn's face colors and she clears her throat.  "Nothing was started," she says.  "So there's nothing to finish.  I'll get your paperwork together so I can pay you.  There are a few forms you need to fill out."

And just like that, she shuts down whatever the hell happened between us back in the cidery.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Autumn

Things are back to normal at the orchard.  Olivia and I are back to our regular routine -- the routine we had last week before Luke Saint blew into this place, a perfect storm of arrogance and sex appeal and boyish charm.

Heavy emphasis on boyish
, I remind myself.  He's only twenty-four, ten years my junior.  And that's a lifetime of difference, when you add a divorce and a toddler to the mix.

I mentally chastise myself for even thinking about him the way I did, there in the cidery, when he just barely, for a moment, touched his lips to mine.  But for an entire week, he's been extremely professional.  And so have I.  There have been no more situations like the ones that happened in the cidery -- or in the kitchen, when Luke put his fingers to my wrist, traced his finger along my palm.

Even now, the thought of his touch sends a shiver up my spine. 
Damn it.

Okay, so I haven't exactly been back to my regular routine.  But fantasizing about Luke at night with my vibrator doesn't mean I'm interested in him -- or that anything is going to happen between us.

Luke has actually been really helpful over the past week, more so than I anticipated.  It's harvest time – my second harvest here – and that means it's chaos.  But he's stepped in to manage with a surprising amount of skill, and has come to me with suggestions for changes in day-to-day operations in the orchard that have been insightful.  He's not just a pretty face – which is all the more reason I should stop thinking about him like that.

"Are you heading into town?"  Greta's voice jolts me out of my thoughts, and I glance at the payroll file on the computer that I've been staring at for the last twenty minutes.  Olivia is with her, and I hold open my arms so she can come crashing into them.

"Oh, Liv-bug, I missed you so much," I tell her, even though I've only been working in the office for a few hours.  I bury my nose in her and breathe in her baby scent.  "Did you have a fun morning with Greta?  Is it time for lunch with June and Stan and the baby?"

"Are you all set, Autumn?" Greta asks.  "Do you need anything before I take off?"

On Wednesdays and Fridays, Greta takes classes down at the state college – she's working her way through school, part-time.  And on Wednesdays, Olivia and I visit my neighbor June, and her kids.  June runs a bed and breakfast just down the road.  Her oldest child, Stan, is a year older than Olivia, and June just had a second child.  June and her husband Cade basically adopted Olivia and I when we moved to West Bend.  Now, they're closer to me than my own family is.

This
is my routine.  This is what I do.  I don't kiss twenty-four-year-old boys in my cidery.

"We're good," I tell her.  "How's that Economics class you're taking?"

Greta rolls her eyes and sighs loudly.  "Ugh.  Rough.  It's so lame."

"Economics can be really interesting," I start, but laugh when she looks at me, slack-jawed, her expression exaggerated.

"Seriously," she says.  "Bo-ring.  It's totally useless.  At least my history class is more interesting.  Oh, I'm going to be late.  I've got to run.  See you tomorrow, Autumn.  Bye-bye, little Liv-liv!  Have fun!"

"Bye-bye, Gigi," Olivia says, waving to her as she disappears.  She can’t pronounce “Greta” yet, so “Gigi” it is.

I talk to Olivia as we grab all of the approximately one million supplies we need for a simple trip down the road to June's house and then into town for groceries.  Olivia babbles to me, nonstop chatter as I get ready and load her into the car.

We're down the driveway when I see them a hundred yards away, on the edge of the property, repairing a fence post.

As if I see any of the rest of them.

I see
him.  Luke.

He's shirtless, his back glistening with sweat, his muscles rippling in the sunlight, clearly visible even from this far away.

"Aw, crap."  I groan the words aloud, pausing for all of a second before I turn down the access road that runs along the fence, silently cursing my own foolishness.  I shouldn't be doing this, turning the car along the access road right now.  I should have pretended I didn't see him, and kept driving, gone to see June, kept my routine the way it's been.

I'm a mother, with her child in the car seat, headed to a play date, for goodness' sake.

I'm flirting with disaster, and I know it.  And yet, I can't stop myself.

When I roll down the window, Luke stops what he's doing, setting down his roll of wire and pliers.  He turns toward me and I swear he moves like something out of a movie, as if he's walking in slow motion.  He might as well have a soundtrack to his movements, as he saunters over to me.  I don't know where to focus as he walks – on the smug smile on his face, or on his chest muscles, covered in tattoos, glistening in the sunlight, sweat rolling down them in rivulets.  It's probably fifty degrees outside and he's shirtless, like it's the summertime.

He's the sexiest thing I've ever seen. And I'm gaping at him like I'm a silly lust-struck teenager.

Luke leans over, his forearms on the edge of the car window, and peers inside.  "Hey Olivia," he says, his voice suddenly a sing-song he seems to have adopted just for her.  She giggles and says
hi
back, and he grins at me.  "I think she might like me."

"She likes licking the floor in the kitchen, too," I say, trying to sound flippant except I can't wipe the stupid grin off my face.  Or ignore the insistent throbbing between my legs.  "So there's obviously no accounting for taste."

How the hell does he smell so good?  He should smell like crap, working outside for hours like this, doing manual labor.  Fuck, even his sweat smells sexy.

"Aw, now, she's developing good taste," Luke says.  "Like her mother."

I force my eyes away from him, looking straight ahead – business-like, professional.  If I were to look at him, at his lips just inches away from me, I don't think I could help myself.  I breathe in deeply, trying not to picture the way his lips felt against mine, or the way his touch sent a shiver through me, to my core.

I clear my throat.  "I'm going into town after visiting a friend," I say.  "Should I bring back some lunch for you and the guys?  I mean, it'll be more of an early dinner by the time I got back, but I figured I'd ask."  Am I babbling?  I force my voice to be steady, clearing my throat again to hide my sudden nervousness.

"Sure, Red," he says.  "That'd be nice."

"I told you to stop calling me that," I say.  Except I'm not sure I mean it anymore.  I've always hated stupid pet names, but the way Luke does it is growing on me.  The nickname rolls off his tongue -- languid, familiar, intimate -- and it makes me picture him saying it while he's close to me, his lips against my ear.

Hell, it makes me think about him saying it while he's inside me.

"Whatever you say,
Red
," he says.  When he saunters back to the group of guys, slowly like he knows I'm watching his every move, I find myself exhaling the breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

"Play date with June," I say to Olivia as I put the car in reverse and back down the access road.  But it's a not a reminder of where we're going.  It's a reminder to myself to get my damn head screwed on straight.

***

June hands me a glass of iced tea, then collapses into the rocking chair beside me.

"Seriously, I should be getting that for you, you know," I say, taking a sip.  "I don't know how you're running around after little Stan and taking care of a new baby and keeping up with the bed and breakfast.  And making iced tea."

June laughs.  "Well, Cade has been immensely helpful," she says.  "He's my saving grace, really.  He's cutting back on hours at the bike shop, and has taken up more around the house and at the B&B.  He's inside right now, doing daddy duty with Callie so I can enjoy a little girl time."

I watch as Olivia takes a plastic car and runs it over the sandcastle Stan is building in the sand box, and he lets out an ear-piercing scream.  "And peaceful kid time," I say.  "Olivia, that is not nice.  Tell him sorry."

June laughs as Olivia wraps her arms around Stan, which immediately appeases the easy-going kid.  "I think this is as relaxing as it's going to get for a while," she says.  "The bed and breakfast has been busier lately, especially since River moved to West Bend, and Cade has had more demand for custom paint jobs the past month or so."

"That's great, right?" I ask.  River Andrews is a movie star, a big one, and she stayed at June's bed and breakfast when she first came out to West Bend.  Then she fell in love with a guy from the town and moved here.  Supposedly, a studio is making a movie out of it.  It's like a fairytale romance.  June's bed and breakfast has gotten a big boost in tourist traffic because of River.

June sips from her glass.  "When it rains, it pours, right?" she says.  "Anyway, I wouldn't trade it for anything.  Being a surgeon was good training for parenthood – at least for the sleep deprivation part of things, anyway."

"I'm really not sure I can picture you as a Navy surgeon," I say, looking at the June I know here, the one who's so laid-back, calm, and casual. 

"Says the woman with an MBA from Wharton who ran a multi-million dollar bourbon company," June says, laughing.

"Uh-huh."  I sip my iced tea again.  "That was my family's company, not mine.  And I ran a department, not the company.  It's not nearly the same."

June holds up her glass.  "Well, cheers to new beginnings and leaving behind prior lives.  And to leaving dirtbag exes."

"I'll definitely toast to that."

"Stan, do not pour that on Olivia's head or you're getting out of the sandbox," June says, her tone warning.  Olivia bats a cup out of his hand and laughs as it falls into the sand with a
thunk
.  "Speaking of new beginnings…"

"Yes?" I ask innocently, even though I already know the question June is about to ask.  It's been almost two weeks since our last play date with the kids, since I cancelled last week.  I know she's heard through the grapevine by now – one of the side benefits of running a bed and breakfast is having a direct line to all of the town gossip – that Luke is working at the orchard.

Besides, West Bend isn't exactly the kind of place where you can keep a secret, not with Mary Lou at the bakery or Alice at the salon, two of the biggest busybodies in the world.  They always have their fingers on the pulse of the town, and are only too happy to go spreading information.  And Luke Saint isn't the kind of guy whose arrival goes unnoticed in a small town like West Bend.

Or anywhere really, I'd imagine.

"I heard you have some help at the orchard," June says.  Her comment sounds innocent but it's laden with all of the implication of one friend's interest in another's dating life.  Or lack of a dating life, to be more accurate.

"Yep."  I sip my iced tea, almost hoping one of the kids will pour a cup of sand over the other one's head, just for the distraction, but they're playing too contentedly to be bothered with my internal angst about the sexy younger man working for me.

"Oh, cut the coy crap, Autumn Mayburn," June says.  "I've known you for two years now, since you turned up in West Bend, and I think I have a pretty good idea now of what makes you blush.  And I've never seen you blush, not one single time, over a guy in this town.  Not even when I tried to set you up with Billy Horton.  And here you are, blushing when I mention the new guy working for you."

"Billy Horton was not as hot as Luke Saint," I blurt out, and immediately slap my hand over my mouth.

Damn it.  Where the hell did that come from?

June squeals and claps her hands together, and the kids echo her squeal, as if they're in on the secret, then turn back to babbling to each other in the sandbox.  "I knew it," she says.  "As soon as I heard he was there, I knew it."

"There's nothing to know.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing," I protest.

"Nothing," June says, laughing.  "That's why you've said the same word three times."

"What do you know about him?"

"Oh, now you're curious?" June asks.  "I thought there was
nothing
going on."

"I'm asking for purely professional reasons.  He's my employee."

"Uh-huh," she says.  "I don't know him."

"But you know everyone in this town," I say, trying to sound disinterested and failing miserably.

June shakes her head.  "I've never even met him.  But I've met his brother.  I’m familiar with the family.”

The way she says it, I know not to pry about the dealings June has had with the Saints.  When June shuts down a conversation, it’s shut down.  But it makes me wonder what kind of family Luke comes from.  "He has a brother?"

June nods.  "Three," she says.  "They're pretty legendary around here."

I can't imagine anyone who looks like Luke – or swaggers around like he's God's gift to women –
not
being legendary in a town like this.  "I'd imagine so."

"Well, if he looks anything like Elias, I can see why you're all flushed right now."

"That's the heat," I lie.  "It's unseasonably warm out here."